- / 



y 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 

And the Southern people were not traitors, nor rebels. They were patriots 

who loved the Constitution and obeyed the laws made for 

the protection of all American citizens. 



"Time may change, men may change, truth and 
principle cannot change." 



A Short Story of the Confederate Soldier, 
the Ideal Soldier of the World 




1911 




By /. OGDEN MURRAY 

A SOLDIER OF 1861-65, 
C. S. A. 




Glass t- ^7 



Book JJ^,- / 



Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



?*- 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 



J3? 



And the Southern people were not traitors, nor rebels. They were 

patriots, who loved the Constitution and^obeyed the laws 

made for the protection of all Americanjcitizens. 



<c Uime may change, men may change, truth and 
principle cannot change. " 




A Short Story of the Confederate Soldier, 
the Ideal Soldier of the World 







BY 



J. OGDEN MURRAY, 
A SOLDIER OF 1861-1865, C. S. A. 

1911 






I 



E- 



DEDICATION 



This Booklet is dedicated to the peerless women of the South, whose 
loyalty, fidelity and devotion to the Confederate Soldier was the inspi- 
ration that made him the ideal soldier of the world, and engraved upon 
the scroll of fame, for herself, a record time cannot efface. 

THE AUTHOR. 



©CU2S3658 







1^ 




J. OGDEN MURRAY 



PREFACE 



HPHIS BOOKLET has behind its publication two good and sufficient reasons. 
The first reason is to give to the present generation, and our Southern 
children especially, a truthful idea of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confed- 
erate States, and his life's work for the American people, without regard to 
section, and we hope to refute, so far as we are able to do by this Booklet, the 
vile slanders that have been uttered against him and his people by the fanatical 
pulpit and press of the Northern States. 

We want our boys and girls of the South to know their fathers were not 
Rebels nor Traitors in 1861, but patriots, who obeyed the laws, and loved the 
Constitution as handed down to us by the men who made it to protect all sections 
alike. We want the whole world to know Jefferson Davis as we know him, the 
American Patriot and Statesman. 

Second. We want to incite in our children a spirit of study of the causes that 
led up to the war; we want the world to have the true story of the cruel, unjust 
and illegal war made upon the South and her people, waged with fanatical malice 
from 1861 to '65, to take from the States of the South and her people their 
political liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. We want the world to know 
the people who hated the law, in their malice because of the prosperity of the 
South, and if the conflict was inevitable and had to come, the South in morals 
had a better reason for her course than did the North. 

We want all the world to know that secession did not have its birth in the 

South in 1861, and we want to show that it was conceived in the brain of a Yankee 

Statesman and born in the State of Loyal Massachusetts, before Mr. Jefferson 

Davis was born. We want all the facts presented at the bar of history, upon 

which we will rest our case, and with these facts, when we have passed over the 

River, our children can refute the charge whenever made that the men who wore 

the gray and followed Robert E. Lee, were Traitors and Rebels. With this 

statement, the reasons for this Booklet's publication, we present the facts upon 

which we rest our case. 

J. OGDEN MURRAY. 

December 9, 1910. 



A Short Biography of Jefferson Davis, 
President of the Confederate States . . . 



An epoch in Southern History began June 3rd, 1808. This day 
Jefferson Davis was born at Fairfield, in the grand old common- 
wealth of Kentucky, that has given to the South some of its grandest 
men and peerless women. One hundred years ago this greatest of 
American patriots was born, destined to be the leader of a liberty 
loving people whose courage, fidelity to principle, and sacrifices to 
be made, would write upon the pages of American History, a story 
that would for all time be the admiration of the world. The name 
of our peerless leader was written upon the scroll of fame by the 
great Creator from the beginning of time, and He watched over 
this child, I do believe, blessing him and directing his life's work 
for the best interests of the grandest people, and purest patriots 
the world has ever known. I hardly feel able to draw for our chil- 
dren the portraiture of Jefferson Davis, and his life's work for our 
people ; but I shall do the best I can— Angels can do no more. 

Jefferson Davis came of revolutionary stock, who helped to carve 
out with their swords this grand nation, the envy of the world. No 
American patriot loved his country greater than Jefferson Davis. 
His childhood days spent in Mississippi were like those of the aver- 
age American children of his day, spent in going to school, hunting, 
fishing and such outdoor exercises as were indulged in by our rest- 
less boys, who have made the distinguished men of this Republic. His 
first tuition was in the old log school house of the early days, develop- 
ing the great mind, forming the noble character that was to make him 
the peer of any man of his day. He was a child of personal courage, 
a youth of ability, a man whose strong will and grand intellect made 
him the leader of men, the idol of our people. When but a child, there 
was an incident occurred which showed the mettle in his make-up— it 
is worth reciting. Jefferson Davis and his sister were constant com- 
panions. One day while on their way to school, the boy had been 
telling his sister never to be afraid, that he was always ready to 
take care of her and defend her, guard and protect her from harm. 
Hardly had he finished telling Pollie how brave he would be for her, 
when a chance to test his courage presented itself. There was a 
character who lived in the settlement near the Davis farm who very 
often indulged in the ardent ; when in his cups he was inclined to 
be insolent and ugly. This fellow was a terror to the children of 
the settlement ; they would scamper off at the sight of the old fel- 
low. This day Jefferson and his sister Pollie were on their way to 
school, passing, as they had to do, to reach the school house, through 
a thick, heavy woods. The children discovered coming toward 
them an object they took to be the old drunkard of the settlement, 



6 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

the terror of the children. Pollie became very much alarmed and 
wanted to run away. Jefferson took her hand and said, "Sister, 
we will not run ; don't be afraid ; I will protect you — have no fear." 
And our young hero boldly advanced to meet the danger. As they 
approached the object of their fright, instead of meeting the poor 
old terror of the neighborhood, they came face to face with a mag- 
nificent buck, his head high in the air with anthlers spread. The 
children stopped ; they had never seen such a beast as this before. 
The buck came close up, took a good look at the children, turned 
and scampered off into the forest. When the buck came close to 
the children the boy put his sister behind him to better protect her 
and calmly awaited events. Thus early in childhood we find Jeffer- 
son Davis the cool courageous spirit he was during his life, ever 
ready to defend the weak from the attacks of the strong and op- 
pressor. At the age of seven young Davis was sent by his parents 
in charge of Major Hinds, a friend of his father, back from Missis- 
sippi to Kentucky, and entered as a pupil in a Catholic institute, 
known as St. Thomas, presided over by the Dominican fathers, who 
taught the best schools of that day. In those early days there were 
no steamboats nor railroads, the travel was by stage coach or horse- 
back, and this boy made the long trip passing through the country 
of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians to reach Kentucky. It was 
on this trip, 1815, Jefferson Davis as a boy first met and formed 
acquaintance with Gen. Andrew Jackson. The General and his 
wife treated young Davis with so much kindness that it inspired in 
the boy's heart a reverence and love for the hero of New Orleans 
that remained with him during life. 

When yoang Davis arrived at St. Thomas College in Kentucky, 
he was so frail looking the good priests of the institute took especial 
care of him. The Rev. Father Wallace, who became bishop of 
Nashville, treated young Davis as a son. The reverend father had 
a bed placed in his own room that the boy might be near him, but, 
Mr. Davis says, Father Wallace never tried to proselyte him from 
the faith of his father. Young Davis remained at the school for 
two years when his mother insisted he should return home. 

He left Louisville City upon one of the first steamboats put upon 
the river. On his arrival at home in Mississippi he again took up 
school work at the county academy. While at this school one of 
the teachers gave him a task which the boy could not do. He went 
to the teacner, candidly stated the case, and asked to be relieved. 
The teacher refused to do this, and insisted that the task should be 
performed or punishment would follow. The boy, believing: him- 
self to be unjustly treated, gathered his books and left the school, 
going home. He reported his case to his father, candidly giving 
the details. His father listened attentively to his son, and said, 
V My son, it is with you to elect whether you will work with your 
hands or your head. My son cannot be an idler in life. I need 
cotton pickers and will pay you and give you work." 

The boy accepted his father's proffer and went to work. A cot- 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 7 

ton bag was given him. He went into the field with the hands, 
and worked day after day in the heat of the burning sun. A few 
days of this work satisfied young Davis that the school room was 
much less an evil than cotton picking under the burning sun. He 
went to his father, stated his inability to work in the field and asked 
to be allowed to go back to school, which he did, determined to do 
to the best of his ability the tasks demanded of him. And this de- 
termination was the great object of Jefferson Davis's life — to do 
his duty at all hazard. Duty with him was first. 

After a few years at this academy he returned to Kentucky and 
entered the University at Lexington, from which school he gradu- 
ated. In 1824 he was appointed a cadet to the military school at 
West Point. He was then but 17 years of age. His classmates 
were Albert Sydney Johnson, Leonidas Polk, and others who became 
famous and wrote their names upon the scroll of heroes in the 
wars of Mexico and 1861-'65. While at West Point Cadet Davis 
was distinguished for his manly, high-toned and lofty character, 
and his love of justice and truth. To illustrate this phase of his 
character : 

One day one of the professors was lecturing Cadet Davis's class 
upon the essential qualities necessary to make a soldier. For some 
unknown reason this professor had formed a great dislike for Cadet 
Davis. Talking directly to Cadet Davis he said: " I doubt not, 
sir, there are a great many who in an emergency would become 
confused and lose their heads, not from cowardice, but from the 
smallness of their minds." This insult was intended for Cadet 
Davis who was powerless to resent it, but the cadet bided his time 
and he had his day. A few days after this, again the same lecturer 
was teaching the class the process of making fireballs. One of the 
balls took fire and the room was filled with explosives. Cadet 
Davis was the first to discover the danger. He very coolly asked 
the professor : "What shall I do, sir? This fireball is ignited?" 
The professor said, "Run for your life, sir, and the professor ran 
for the door, the first to make the exit. Cadet Davis did not flee 
the danger like the others of his class. He coolly walked over to 
the burning ball, took it in his hand, raised the window and threw 
it out upon the grass, and by this presence of mind saved the build- 
ing and forever silenced his enemy, the professor. 

One of the most pronounced features in Mr. Davis's character 
was his horror of doing the least act that would oppress the weak 
or wound the feelings of the humblest person. Throughout his 
whole life he exhibited this strong feature of his character. He 
was generous, kind, and sincere to his fellowman. He had the true 
idea of Christian love and charity the Master taught. His heart 
was filled with love for his fellowman and devotion to duty. In the 
year 1828 Cadet Davis graduated from West Point and became a 
second lieutenant of infantry in the regular army. His first duty 
was at Fort Crawford now in the state of Wisconsin. 

The same characteristic that distinguished him as a cadet made 



8 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

him prominent as an officer and attracted the attention of his supe- 
rior officers. While stationed at Fort Crawford Lieut. Davis was 
detailed in charge of a detachment to cut timber to repair the fort. 
The lieutenant and his party were in a flatboat going down the 
stream. They were hailed by a party of Indians who demanded a 
trade of tobacco. One of the men of the detachment, knowing the 
ways of the Indians and their treachery, warned Lieut. Davis not 
to push the boat ashore. "Push the boat further out into the 
stream," was Lieut. Davis's order. The Indians seeing their prey 
escaping, yelling with fury, jumped into their canoes and gave 
chase to Lieut. Davis and his party. The Indians were gaining on 
the flatboat, the men were greatly excited. Almost exhausted 
Lieut. Davis, calm and cool, bid his men to have no fears. He 
ordered a sail to be made of a blanket and with this slender chance 
outsailed his Indian pursuers and saved his detachment from death 
or a worse fate, Indian captivity. I cite these things to show that 
Jefferson Davis was a man of thought, a man of resources, a man 
of courage, who never lost his head. One other incident on this 
line before we take up the political life of Mr. Davis. 

In 1831-32, Col. Morgan, commanding the first infantry, U. S. A., 
sent Lieut. T. R. B. Gardiner to Jordons Ferry, now Duleith, with 
a small detachment of soldiers to prevent trespassing on the lead 
mines, west of the Mississippi river. About this time Col. Morgan 
died and Col. Zachary Taylor took command of the first infantry. 
The lands upon which the lead mines were located belonged to the 
Indians who determined to drive out the whites. Col. Taylor sent 
Lieuts. Abercombe and Jefferson Davis with a small detachment of 
men to check the Indians and remove the whites from the lead 
mines until such treaties could be made with the Indians to relin- 

nmon + In /tit* AT^rnfvvcni'n iin fl^^r«n TVi"!"inaQ 
V^i^iikjj-i. Liu, ii uvv IKi uni|' in iiicorr IllijJ. vTO« 

These miners, who had taken up claims, were men of determina- 
tion, and did not intend to remove from the mines without resist- 
ance for what they claimed was their right to work the lead. 
Things about the mines looked rather serious. Lieut. Davis was 
given charge of the matter of dealing with the miners. He crossed 
over the river and boldly called the miners together. He informed 
them of his instructions to remove them from the mines until the 
Indian title thereto could be obtained by the United States. Among 
the miners was a redheaded desperado, the leader, who informed 
Lieut. Davis that the miners had resisted former officers backed by 
soldiers, and if he, Davis, knew when he was well off he better 
clear out and take his soldiers with him. Lieut. Davis said, "I 
feel sorry for you all, but my orders are to remove you by force if 
I must." He then said to the redheaded desperado and leader, 
' • I want you to walk a few yards into the timber that we may 
have a private talk." This the fellow consented to do. Lieut. 
Davis candidly explained the Government's reason for the removal 
of the miners and promised them that they all would be protected 
in their rights when the Government obtained the title for the 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 9 

mines from the Indians. After leaving the desperado Lieutenant 
Davis walked over to a large group of miners and made his 
first public speech. At first the miners made ugly remarks, but 
eventually listened in silence to what Lieut. Davis said. After 
making his speech he left, telling them to move as he would be 
compelled to use force if his orders were not obeyed. Some few 
weeks after this interview he again crossed the river to talk with 
the miners. His friends begged him not to go without a force. 
He took only an orderly and coolly went into a little drinking booth, 
a resort of the miners. Lieut. Davis bid them all the time of day 
and said, " My friends, I know you have thought over our last talk 
and have concluded to accept my terms and are going to drink to 
my success. So I will treat you all." These rough miners gave 
him a cheer, and he accomplished by kindness and tact what other 
men would have used force to do, thus showing himself, although 
young in years, a born leader of men. For this great success the 
Iowa legislature passed a vote of thanks many years after, when 
Col. Davis lay wounded at Saltillo after the battle of Buena Vista. 
Now we shall take up Lieut. Davis in the Black Hawk war and 
show you how he won his spurs, helping to make great the Gov- 
ernment that took from him his liberty, his citizenship, and perse- 
cuted him as no other American citizen was ever persecuted. When 
the Black Hawk Indian war began, Gen. Winfield Scott sent two 
young lieutenants to Dixon, 111., to accept and muster into the 
United States service such troops as might present themselves. 
One of these lieutenants was a man of gentle, fascinating manners, 
affable, pleasant and courteous, drawing to him those with whom 
he came in contact. The other lieutenant was just as pleasant but 
most exceedingly modest. The first was Jefferson Davis, first lieu- 
tenant, U. S. A., the second, Lieut. Anderson, who was in 1861 
Maj. Anderson, of Fort Sampter fame. On the morning of the 
arrival of the first troops for muster a homely, tall, and slender 
youth presented himself to Lieut. Davis as the captain of the com- 
pany to be mustered. This homely young man was Abraham Lin- 
coln and the young lieutenant, was Jefferson Davis, the man who 
administered to Abraham Lincoln the first oath of allegiance he 
ever took to the United States Government. Jefferson Davis became 
President of the Confederate States, Abraham Lincoln President of 
the United States, and Lieut. Anderson, a prominent figure in the 
war of 1861-65, and thus met for the first time the two men whose 
names have gone sounding down the corridors of time; names never 
to be forgotten while time shall last. In this Indian war Lieut. Davis 
was brought in close contact with two remarkable men, Col. Boone, 
son of the famous Daniel Boone, of Kentucky, and Maj. Jesse Bean. 
The courage and integrity of these two men were beyond question 
and their implicit faith and confidence in Lieut. Davis was known 
to the whole army. Maj. Bean was a close observer ; he had but 
little education and was a man of few words. This man took great 
delight in hearing Lieut. Davis talk, and the lieutenant often talked 



10 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

with Bean about the phenomena of nature, telling him in scientific 
language the theory of cause and effect. Bean took it all in as 
Gospel truth, simply because Lieut. Davis said it was true ; but one 
day Bean's faith in Lieut. Davis was almost destroyed or at least 
badly shaken. Mr. Davis had been explaining to Bean the laws 
which govern our solar system. Bean listened in respectful silence 
until Mr. Davis had finished ; then turning to him said : "Lieut. 
Davis, I have always had great confidence in your learning and 
great respect for you, and I really did not think you would poke 
fun at the old man who loves you. As for your story of the earth 
moving and the stars standing still it is all bosh. Night after night, 
sir, when watching my beaver traps I have seen the stars rise in 
the East, sail across the skies, and set in the West. No man, not 
even you, Lieut. Davis, can convince Jesse Bean that the stars 
stand still." So Lieut. Davis gave up the scientific education of 
Bean. 

In this Indian war Lieut. Davis proved the mettle of which he was 
made, fairly and honorably, says his superior officers ; he won his 
spurs and the confidence and love of his men by his coolness, kind- 
ness, and courage. At the close of the war, 1832, Lieut. Davis was 
sent on recruiting service to the city of Louisville. While on this 
recruiting duty he was called to Lexington. While there the cholera 
broke out in its most malignant form. The citizens who could, fled 
from the pest-stricken city. But Lieut. Davis, true to himself, 
true to his duty, remained at his post looking after the health and 
comfort of his recruits, regardless of consequences to himself. An 
incident while Lieut. Davis was in Lexington again shows his good- 
ness of heart. A poor white man and an old negro died of cholera. 
No one cared to risk the burial of these people ; not so with Lieut. 
Jefferson Davis. He found after much difficulty a carpenter and 
he actually helped him to make coffins for these paupers and with 
the carpenter buried the bodies in the cemetery, even helping to 
dig the graves. I tell this incident to show the example of the 
true Christian charity which filled the heart of Jefferson Davis, 
and I tell you this was the prominent feature in his character dur- 
ing his whole life — duty and love to his fellowman. How base is 
the slander, how malignant the hate, how vile the tongues of those 
who charge Mr. Davis with cruelty. How could such a heart as beat 
in the breast of our beloved chief harbor one cruel thought against 
a fellowman. In 1835 Mr. Davis resigned from the army retiring 
to private life. In 1843 he began his political career. In a canvas 
as elector at large for Polk and Dallas from Mississippi in 1845 Mr. 
Davis was elected to Congress. But prior to his electon to Con- 
gress he was defeated for the legislature of Mississippi. In this 
brief sketch we can give but brief sketches of this great American 
patriot. But I hope to paint a portraiture that will give an insight 
into the greatness of this great man, Jefferson Davis. Before he 
was a candidate for the state legislature and subsequently elected 
to Congress he was never a candidate before the people for any 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 11 

position. At the time Mr. Davis was a candidate for the legislature 
what was then known as the act of repudiation was foremost of 
all questions in the minds of the people of Mississippi. It was par- 
amount to all other questions. Mr. Davis's position on this question 
was simply this: He held that the Union Bank Bonds did not con- 
stitute a debt of the state and the debt as claimed by those who 
opposed him was unconstitutional ; that the question was one the 
courts should determine. If the court held the debt legal and right 
then it should be paid, but if the debt, as he claimed, was uncon- 
stitutional, then the state should not pay it, and upon this issue he 
was defeated for the legislature ; and upon this flimsy testimony 
the charge that Mr. Davis was a repudiationist is based. During 
the Civil War the United States Government went so far to spread 
this slander that it sent Robert J. Walker, its financial agent, all 
over Europe, to promulgate this slander against Mr. Davis. Why 
Mr. Walker, who was personally familiar with all the facts in the 
case and fully understood Mr. Davis's position, could loan himself 
to this scheme of slander is to say the least strange. There can be 
no excuse for his conduct. He was a senator from Mississippi and 
could not help but know Mr. Davis's position on this question. In 
1844 Mr. Davis loomed up a star upon the political sky, as a party 
leader. In the national convention held this year Mr. Davis was a 
delegate. Van Buren was the choice of a large portion of the Dem- 
ocratic party. In the Mississippi state convention a resolution was 
offered that the delegates from Mississippi should be instructed to 
vote for Van Buren as long as there was a reasonable chance for 
his nomination by the convention. Mr. Davis amended this resolu- 
tion by making John C. Calhoun second choice of the state of Mis- 
sissippi, which motion was passed, and now Mr. Davis was before 
the people a party leader, which position he never lost. On Dec. 
8, 1845, Mr. Davis took his seat in Congress as a representative 
from the state of Mississippi. On the 29th of December he offered 
his resolution which was: That the Committee on Military Affairs 
be instructed to inquire into the expediency of converting some of 
the forts owned by the United States into military schools of in- 
struction. His next resolution was to establish a post route direct 
and daily between Montgomery, Ala., and Jackson, Miss. His first 
speech in Congress was made Feb. 6, 1846; the Oregon Question 
was before the House. From this speech I will quote such portions 
as will show the force and power of this great man and show how 
he detested hypocracy and cant. This hatred for anything insin- 
cere never modified during his life. In this speech he said: " The 
opinion has gone out that no politician dare to be the advocate of 
peace. When war is mooted, that will be an evil hour. The sands 
of our republic will be nearly run when it shall be in the power of 
any demagogue or fanatic to raise a war clamor and control the 
legislature of the country. The evils of war must fall upon the 
people and with them the war feeling should originate. We, their 
representatives, are but the mirror to reflect the light and never 



12 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

should become the torch to fire the pile. We. sirs, cannot expect, 
we should not require our adversary to submit to more than we 
would bear, and I ask after the notice has been given and the twelve 
months have expired, who would allow Great Britain to exercise 
exclusive jurisdiction over Oregon? If we would resist such an act 
by force of arms before ourselves perform it we should prepare for 
war. " He then drew a comparison between the annexation of Texas 
and Oregon occupation, denying the South had been inconsistent in 
treating this Oregon question. ' 'Who are the men, ' ' he asked, ' 'who 
impute for us of the South sordid motives. They are the same men 
who resisted Texan annexation and most eagerly press on the im- 
mediate occupation of Oregon. The source is worthy the suspicion. 
These are the men whose constitutional scruples resisted a country 
gratuitously offered to us, but now they look forward to gaining 
Canada by conquest. In event of war with England I pledge the 
loyalty of Mississippi. Do you pledge your states?" 

How fortunate for the country that Congress had one man who 
dare do right and defend from the aspersions and slanders of the 
Northern fanatics the people of the South. This debate brought 
out very clearly another characteristic of Mr. Davis. His love for 
those memories that formed the glory of all the states. He said: ' 'In 
the service of my country I know no North nor South nor East nor 
West from sire to son. If envy is eating the bonds with which our 
fathers expected to bind us forever, the cause does not come from 
the South ; our Southern atmosphere does not furnish the cause to 
divide the country. When ignorance led by fanatical hate armed by 
all unchangeableness assails the domestic institution of the South 
I try to forgive for the sake of the righteous among the wicked. I 
leave to silent contempt the malign prediction of the member from 
Ohio and remember the manly sentiments of the gentlemen from 
the West." Closing his speech, Mr. Davis uttered these prophetic 
words : ' ' The grants of power are general and therefore many 
things must attach as incident. If the states deny the means neces- 
sary to the existence of the Government nothing is more sure than 
it will usurp them and a conflict will arise between rival powers in- 
jurious to both. If, on the other hand, the Federal Government 
bv indirection seeks more than is proper to its functions and neces- 
sary to their exercise, indiscriminate opposition may be general 
and liberality of patriotism be lost in the conflict. The perpetuity 
of our union requires the states, whenever the grants of the Con- 
stitution are inadeqnate to the purpose for which it was ordained, 
to add them from their sovereignty as they may be needed. " How 
far this great man's prophetic eye looked into the future and saw 
the disaster that was to follow the fanaticism of the North and her 
hatred for the South and her people. Mr. Davis loved the Union 
with a patriot's devotion. He loved the Constitution made by our 
fathers for all sections of our country, and he never ceased to plead 
that it should not be destroyed by the fanatics of the North. 

In 1845 the Texas annexation took place. Mexico threatened to 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 13 

invade Texas. Gen. Taylor with the United States army was ordered 
to protect the Texas border. The war cloud hung over the coun- 
try. President Polk offered the appointment of brigadier-general 
of volunteers to Mr. Davis. He declined. Read why he did so. 

' ' I prefer to be elected by the volunteer troops I command. After 
the election and the elective right of the volunteers ceases, the ap- 
pointing power should be the governors of the states whose troops 
are to be commanded by the general." So great was Mr. Davis's 
love and respect for the rights of each state and his fellow man no 
honors could tempt him to overstep the line marked by equity and jus- 
tice. Before Mr. Davis left Washington for the scene of war he called 
upon Gen. Winfield Scott to say farewell. The general tried to 
persuade Mr. Davis to arm but four companies of his regiment with 
rifles. Mr. Davis insisted his regiment should all have rifles ; that 
with rifles the Mississippians would fight better with this arm as 
they were used to handling it. They had no faith in the old flint- 
lock arms used by the Government. He showed his fine judgment 
in this matter, insisted and obtained rifles, and his proof of the fact 
that he knew what arm was best for his men was proven on many 
a bloody battlefield in Mexico, when the Mississippi troops under 
command of Jefferson Davis showed their perfect use of the Missis- 
sippi rifle as did their descendants in 1861-65. Gen. John E. Wool 
said, in special orders, this of Col. Davis and his regiment: "The 
Mississippi Riflemen, under Col. Davis, were highly conspicuous for 
gallantry and steadiness at Monterey, acting like veteran troops. 
Col. Davis, though severely wounded, remained in the saddle until 
the close of the battle ; his distinguished coolness and courage and 
heavy loss of his regiment on this day entitles him to the particu- 
lar notice of the Government." This report was made by Gen. 
Wool in Mexico, in 1849. 

After the Mexican War was over Mr. Davis returned to his home 
in Mississippi, fully determined to settle down in private life. But 
the people of Mississippi had other views and needed Mr. Davis's 
services in the United States Senate. Gov. A. G. Brown appointed 
Mr. Davis United States Senator for Mississippi, just two months 
after Mr. Davis returned from Mexico. There was one general 
approval throughout the state when Gov. Brown made the appoint- 
ment. When Mr. Davis took his seat in the United States Senate 
he was suffering much with his wound and compelled to use crutches. 
The members of the Senate gave the young Mississippian a cordial 
and unreserved welcome as a member of the 29th Congress. Mr. 
Davis had won reputation as a brilliant young member, as a soldier 
over the border he had won his spurs in defense of his country's 
honor. He, with his regiment, had demonstrated American valor 
on the battlefield and won the love of his fellow countrymen. Mr. 
Davis was appointed in the Senate on several important committees, 
the most important being that of Military Affairs. Early in Jan- 
uary there arose in the Senate a debate which gave proof to the 
country of Mr. Davis's intelligent conception of all questions con- 



14 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

nected with Mexico. Mr. Cass, of Michigan, had reported from the 
Military Committee what was called the "Ten Regiment Bill." 
This bill was inspired by the War Department. Mr. Calhoun, of 
South Carolina, opposed this bill as he had opposed the Mexican 
War — in fact, all the Southern Senators opposed this bill. Mr. Cal- 
houn saw in the bill the specter of a conquered country, a suspended 
autonomy. While Mr. Crittenden could see nothing in the bill but 
the great bugbear of a military Frankenstein to destroy all that was 
good, not so with Mr. Davis. In answer to the objections of Messrs. 
Calhoun, Crittenden, and others to this bill he took a broad, intel- 
ligent view of the situation. In answer to the fears of these gen- 
tlemen that Mexico would ultimately be absorbed by the United 
States and present to the world another dismembered Poland, Mr. 
Davis said, "I can accept Mr. Calhoun's resolution and still vote 
for this bill. Let me ask you, gentlemen, Is Mexico conquered? 
Is any part of it conquered? Conquest, as laid down by some 
writers, is of three kinds. Ruin is one of these kinds of conquest, 
but we have not ruined Mexico and God forbid we ever should. The 
moral feeling of this country would never justify such a course. 
Another mode of conquest is to hold a country by controlling its 
government ; that is not suited to the genius of our country. We 
send no pro-consul abroad — no provincial army to direct the gov- 
ernment of the country. We recognize as the great basis of all 
institutions self-government. The other mode of conquest is by 
colonizing a country. We can not do that. In neither of these 
modes, then, have we conquered Mexico." To Mr. Crittenden's 
dread of the regular soldier, Mr. Davis said : "If this country were 
invaded I would turn, sir, to the great body of the militia. I use 
the terms of volunteer and militia as synonymous— for its defense. 
But when we are engaged in a foreign war and only defensive oper- 
ations are carried on, we then have reached the point where regu- 
lars are the force, which should be employed where the militia may 
not be called upon to justify the disruption of society which would 
result if we brought out that grand class of soldiers who constitute 
our volunteers. As long as you keep the high-breed men for battle 
they will bear any privation, submit to every restraint, and discharge 
every duty. But you can not expect these men who have broken 
all home ties in order to fight for their country, will sacrifice them- 
selves to the mere duty of the sentinel." How well proven was 
this declaration of Mr. Davis shown in 1861-65? The Confenerate 
army was an army of high-breed men and they were the ideal sol- 
diers of the world. In the course of the debate upon this "Ten 
Regiment Bill" it was made clear that he was just the man for 
chairmanship of the Senate Military Committee, and to this position 
he was elected in the 31st Congress almost unanimously. Thirty- 
two votes were given him to five votes for all others. On July 6, 
President Polk laid before the Senate a copy of the treaty of peace 
between the United States and Mexico. 
While in the U. S. Senate Mr. Davis took care to put himself on 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 15 

record at all times against the centralization of power by the gen- 
eral government. On one occasion, he said : ' ' I hold this whole 
system of internal improvements by the Federal government is an 
assumption of power not conferred by the Constitution, but in this 
case I approve this appropriation for the repair of this dam in the 
Ohio river for the sole reason the Government has constructed it, 
but I, while voting for this bill, do not surrender my idea of the 
literal translation of the Constitution." The power to prescribe 
rules for commerce among the states was surrendered to the Gov- 
ernment and thereby the states were deprived of the power to im- 
pose restrictions or levy duty upon the commerce of each other. 
To regulate is to make rules not to provide means On April 20, 
1848, Mr. Hall, of New Hampshire, hurled a firebrand into the 
Senate. The bill was in relation to riots and unlawful assemblies 
in the District of Columbia. The avowed purpose of this bill was 
to punish an assemblage of armed citizens of the District who had 
made an attack upon an Abolitionist paper, The National Era, pub- 
lished in Washington, which had been making attacks on the citi- 
zens and Southern members of Congress. This bill was cunningly 
drawn. It said not a word about an attempt which had stirred the 
capitol but a few days before, when the Schooner Pearl, manned 
by a band of non-resident men, attempted stealing seventy-odd 
negroes belonging under the Constitution to citizens of the District. 
" Your bill,' said Mr. Davis, "speaks loudly for one class of prop- 
erty, that in a newspaper, but it is dumb as a mute upon that to be 
accorded to another kind of property guaranteed by the Constitu- 
tion. The time has come," he said, "for Congress to interpose 
the legislation necessary to punish the men who come within our 
jurisdiction, acting in fact in morals as incendiaries, coming right 
here within the limits of the jurisdiction of Congress to steal prop- 
erty recognized by the Constitution. Is this district to be made 
the field of abolition struggle? Is this Senate chamber to be made 
the hot bed of sedition and treason? Why is it that these fanatics 
will introduce these insults to the South?" Turning to Hall, he 
said : " Sir, if civil discord is to be thrown from this chamber upon 
the land, if the fire is to be kindled herewith which is to burn the 
temple of our Union, if it is to be made the center from which civil 
war is to radiate, let the conflict begin. I am ready for one to 
meet any incendiary who, dead to every feeling of patriotism, at- 
tempts to introduce it." They were strong words from Mr. Davis 
for he was always inclined to discountenance more than to urge 
disunion as a remedy for the dissensions within the Union. He 
loved the Union. He loved the Constitution. He stood for the law 
and obedience to the law. He had no sympathy nor patience with 
the fanatical disruptors of the Union of the North whom he knew 
would sooner or later destroy the law and the guarantees of the 
Constitution. Later on came up the bill to admit Oregon. Here, 
again, Mr. Davis showed himself a master of statesmanship. This 
was one of his greatest speeches, made July 12, 1847, in the 30th 



16 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

Congress. "Congress," he said, "had no power to change the 
conditions or to strip the master of his property, entering a terri- 
tory with his property. The South does not ask for the introduc- 
tion of slavery into Oregon, but it does demand protection for its 
property, On the acquisition of territory the condition of slavery 
is not changed. The Government acquired no new power over it, 
but stood merely in the position of an agent for its protection. 
Until a territory becomes a state the law must remain inviolable 
until abrogated by the state enactments," Further on in this same 
speech, Mr. Davis said : "The slave must be made fit for freedom 
by education and discipline and thus made unfit for slavery." He 
snowed that all disorder that existed in the South was not of do- 
mestic origin, but came from New England and Great Britain and 
imposed upon the South the strongest obligation to rise in self-de- 
fense. He spoke of the fraternal feeling which induced the South 
to make common cause of war with the North against England. 
The South had no cause of complaint ; it was flourishing by its trade 
with Great Britain. But the South' s great love for our common 
country and the fraternal feeling for the people of the North and 
principle made us take up arms against Great Britain, and in return 
for this the North paid us in treachery, deceit, and a demand that 
we change our domestic institutions to gratify the selfishness of 
the fanatics. "The South," said Mr. Davis, "does not ask any 
special privileges, but we do demand there shall be no interference 
with our legal rights given us by the Constitution. You, of the 
North, resent such interference ; why should you ask us of the 
South to tolerate the open violation of the Constitution, you inject 
or try to do so into every bill you present to the Senate? You de- 
nounce our institutions and our people. Are we, sirs, not as good 
and loyal citizens as you are? Have riots, conflagrations, and de- 
struction of private property been more frequent in the South than 
in the non-slave holding states. If slavery be a sin you are guilty, 
for by you came its introduction. As owners of the commercial 
marine you imported these slaves, you sold them in the South, and 
you are parties to the contract that made them legal property. If 
you repent of this, show your repentance by keeping the moral ob- 
ligations you made when you sold to the South her slaves. You 
forget in your fanaticism that the Government is the agent of the 
states ; it is simply the creature of the states from which it derives 
all its power. Let those who possess opportunity to judge the men 
who have grown up in the presence of slavery as it exists in the 
United States and say if they are not useful, noble citizens. Com- 
pare the slaves of the South with the free blacks of the North and 
tell me which is the most contented and happy? One suffers all 
the pain of physical want; they fill the penitentiaries and pauper 
institutes. View the slave of the South. He is moral, honest and 
well cared for." 

This speech was one of the many powerful defenses he make on 
the floor of the senate for his beloved South and her people. 



biography of jefferson davis. 17 

Mr. Davis on Cuban Affairs. 

In the spring of 1848, Gen. Lopez called one evening to see Sen- 
ator Davis at his Washington home and invited Mr. Davis to take 
charge and command of an expedition to free Cuba, liberate her 
from the Spanish bonds that held her. There was to be $10(J,000 
given Mr. Davis when he took charge of the affair and $100,000 
and a coffee plantation when the Island should be free. In telling 
this to friends, Mr. Davis said: 

"If it had been consistent with my idea of duty I would have ac- 
cepted." This same offer was made to General, then Major, Rob- 
ert E. Lee, but he, too, did not think it consistent to accept after 
he had advised with Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis served in the Senate 
in the 31st Congress, 1849-50. It was in this Congress that Mr. 
Clay presented his famous compromise resolution. This was a 
congress of giants. Among this great aggregation were men whose 
names will never fade from the pages oj American history. Davis, 
Calhoun, Clay, Badger, N. C. ; Butler, S. C. ; Hunter, of Virginia— 
from the South. Webster, Seward, Hamlin, of the North ; Benton, 
Corwin, Douglass, of the West. In this Congress came the first 
blow struck at the Union. The anti-slavery movement spread so 
rapidly that it became aggressive and arrogant. During the debate 
on this resolution of Mr. Clay, Mr. Seward, of New York, attempted 
to introduce a resolution that the Rev. Father Mathew, a great 
temperance orator of that day, should be invited to a seat within 
the bar of the Senate. Mr. Clemens objected to the reverend gen- 
tleman being invited inside of the Senate bar, because he had de- 
nounced the South as little better than a band of pirates. To this 
objection Mr. Seward spoke and urged his resolution be adopted. 
In reply Mr. Davis tore off Mr. Seward's mask of insincerity and 
laid bare before the world his hypocrisy and the cant of the North. 
"The Union, without the constitution, we hold to be a curse ; with 
the constitution we hold it a blessing and will never abandon it." 
In this speech he warned and begged the fanatics of the North to 
abandon their work of destroying the Union. The people of the 
South, he said, know their rights. This generation all maintain 
the character of their fathers. They will sustain the institutions 
they inherited if necessary by war. They will march up to meet 
the issue face to face. Do not, I plead, make this necessary. In 
this session of the 31st Congress the real agitation of the abolition 
party began. Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Penn- 
sylvania all sent petitions to Congress on the question of slavery. 
A reference to the Congressional Record will show that Mr. Davis 
was always in his seat, always on the alert to protect the South 
from the slanders and hate of the fanatics who were bent on destroy- 
ing the Union, to build it up again upon a basis of unconstitutional 
principles and foundation of negro equality which they succeeded 
in doing after years of agitation, slander and misrepresentation of 
the South. 



18 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

In this year, 1849, there was a great political campaign in state 
politics of Mississippi. Mr. Davis had just been elected a Senator 
for six years. His high sense of honor prevented him from taking 
part in this campaign. The success of the Democratic party would 
be endangered by the nomination of Gen. Quitman who held to the 
Calhoun doctrine of nullification. The party turned to Mr. Davis, 
his name was announced for Governor and he at once resigned his 
seat in the U. S. Senate to enter the State campaign. Mr. Davis 
had just six weeks in which to work. He was broken in health 
and could not bear the fatigue of campaigning. He was defeated 
and now determined to retire from public life and enter again upon 
the private life of a planter. He had just begun to feel again the 
comfort of home life at Briarfield when Mr. Franklin Pierce (1852) 
was elected President. He wrote, urging Mr. Davis to enter his 
cabinet, pleading with him to come Washington if only for the inau- 
guration. When Mr. Davis arrived in Washington the 4th of March, 
1853, Mr. Pierce brought all the pressure he could to bear upon Mr. 
Davis to induce him to take the portfolio of the War Department. 
Mr. Davis yielded. December 7, 1853, as Secretary of War, he sub- 
mitted his first report. Like all his public documents it was marked 
by a dignity of style which invested dead facts with life, but added 
force and argument to his work. While in President Pierce's cab- 
inet Mr. Davis was the conspicuous figure, making such vast im- 
provements in the work of department that even those opposed to 
Mr. Pierce's administration were compelled to give praise to the 
Secretary of War. Take, today, the opinion of every old officer of 
the United States Army, and he will without hesitation tell you 
that Jefferson Davis was the best as he was the greatest Secretary 
of War who ever held that portfolio. 

He established new army posts west of the Mississippi river for 
the protection of emigration. He put a strong post at El Paso. 
He made the raids of the terrible Comanche Indians across the bor- 
der more hazardous for them and thereby diminished their depre- 
dations. He took up and corrected and perfected the recruiting 
service. His influence for good diminished the desertions from the 
army. He recommended an increase of pay for the private soldier 
and promotion for the non-commissioned officers to that of com- 
missioned officers. His great sense of equity and justice dictated 
this reform. He insisted that only intelligent men of character 
should be enlisted, thus fixing a higher standard in the ranks of 
the army. He urged the defense of our coasts, and he it was that 
took practical steps to have the most practicable and economical 
route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, 
and to him alone is this first inception of a railroad due. 

It was Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War who declared the 

Government should undertake nothing private enterprise could 

accomplish. He gave his views for this opinion and they have 

ver be . controverted. He urged the establishment of an armory 

on Western waters and the removal of one of the armories from 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 19 

the East to the West. Let me say here this one act alone disposes 
of that base, malicious slander that he, when in office, strengthened 
the South in its military work at the expense of the North. Under 
the supervision of the War Department, Secretary of War Davis 
energetically prosecuted the extension of the Capitol. Under his 
supervision the grand waterway for supplying Washington City 
w.ith drinking water was built. A splendid stone aqueduct stands 
but a few miles from Washington, a monument to his earnest labor. 
The engineer, Capt. C. M. Meigs, who had charge of the great 
work under Mr. Davis, had the impudence in his bigotry and zeal 
to have Mr. Davis's name erased from the tablet on the bridge, 
but by the efforts of Mrs. Cornelia Brach Stone, president general 
of the U. D. C, the name of Mr. Davis has been restored to Cabin 
John Bridge. 

Mr. Davis's second report as Secretary of War is an interesting 
document. I commend it to all military students. Report of Sec- 
retary of War, second session, thirty-third Congress. Executive 
document, No. 1, 1854. The city of Dubuque today is indebted to 
Mr. Davis for her grand ice harbor, the best on the river from St. 
Paul's to New Orleans. In the third report of Mr. Davis as Secre- 
tary of War we find many more improvements made by him. He 
stopped the making of smoothbore arms and had improved rifles. 
Breechloading and other patterns made, those which were valueless 
to the soldier as a defense, were cast aside and better things substi- 
tuted. In his fourth report all the Indian troubles on the plains 
had ended or nearly so. Mr. Davis was a civil-service reformer. 
He knew no politics when he was making appointments for office. 
Fitness alone not politics was his rule. Whig nor Democrat could-»#fe- 
hold office if he could not fill the position up to the standard set by 
Mr. Davis. He had the system of tactics revised and sent Capt. 
Hardee to France to study the best modes. He organized and per- 
fected the army signal corps. On one occasion a man who knew 
nothing about large guns, their expansion and contraction under 
heat, went to Mr. Davis to endorse his invention. After the Sec- 
retary of War had talked to the inventor and found out his total 
ignorance he refused to endorse the invention. The inventor took 
his gun to Congress, asked and got an appropriation to have his 
gun made and tested. The inventor made requisition on the War 
Department for assistance which was accorded him. When the 
gun was finished he applied for a gunner to fire it, but to this Mr. 
Davis said, "Sir, I cannot give you a man's life and you must find 
some one else to fire your gun. I will not order an officer of the 
U. S. Army to do it." As the inventor did not care to risk his own 
life the gun was never fired. 

John W. Forney, of Philadelphia, said of Mr. Davis in his paper: 
"Jefferson Davis was blessed with many accomplishments. He 
was statesman and alike a soldier. He was as conversant with the 
smallest minutiae of his department. He devoted himself to he 
decoration of the Capitol. He stood by Capt. C. M. Meigs in all 



20 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

his work. Jefferson Davis was the greatest Secretary of War we 
ever had and the best friend to worthy young men I ever knew." 
On March 4, 1857, Mr. Davis resigned his office as Secretary of 
War. The parting between President Pierce and his Secretary of 
War was tender and sincere. Mr. Buchanan had been elected to 
succeed Mr. Pierce as President. Now came those horrible days of 
185<?to 1861. Mr. Davis was again in the United States Senate. 
John Brown, that prince of scoundrels and murderers, a fanatic of 
fanatics, had gathered together a band of lawless characters and 
invaded the State of Virginia. On the night of October 16, 1859, 
this band of cut-throats virtually began the war of 1861-65, bring- 
ing the result that Mr. Davis time and time again spoke of and depre- 
cated. John Brown's first victim was an inoffensive colored man 
named Stephens who refused to join Brown and his band of mur- 
derers. In the excited condition of the public mind in the South 
this raid of Brown's into the State of Virginia made the condition 
acute. Volunteers rushed to the scene. Brown and part of his 
party were captured, tried and hung for their treason and murder. 
Fowler, in his work, "Sectional Controversy," says in cities and 
towns in the North on the day John Brown was hung at Charles- 
town, Va., bells were tolled and prayers offered in the churches. 
He was honored as a saint and martyr, when in truth he was but 
a cowardly murderer of women and children. Men of his own party 
associates have so denounced him. Be he what he may he was a 
violator of the laws of the State of Virginia, and that grand old 
Commonwealth hung him as she would any other criminal. It was 
proven that both members of the Senate and House of Congress 
had contributed money to further Brown's scheme to add fuel to 
the flame. Hinton Helper, of North Carolina, wrote that infamous 
book, "The Impending Crisis. " The book intensified the feeling 
between the North and the South. The proposition of his book 
was to abolish slavery in the South by first inciting a revolution 
among that class "called poor whites." This book also urged that 
there should be no fellowship in religion, no charity for slaveowners. 
Murder and rapine was the religion of this fanatic. Congress 
opened December 7, 1859. Incredible as it may seem this Helper 
book was purchased by Northern Senators and the fanatics of the 
North and sent out as campaign matter. It was scattered over the 
South by the secret agents of the abolitionist societies of the North. 
Northern members of the Senate openly ignored the decisions of 
the Supreme Court and declared their intention to violate the rights 
of property within the territories guaranteed by the Constitution. 
The abolitionist took cause with Stephen A. Douglass. The whole 
country was in uproar. Conservative Northern Democrats and 
Southern Democrats stood together to stem this tide that they saw 
must dash the ship of Union to pieces upon the rocks of fanaticism. 
About this moment when lines were drawn tight such sentiments 
were heard from leaders all over the North, that the most hopeful 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 21 

men of that day felt the hour had come and the death knell of the 
Union struck. 

Now we will take up the crisis that culminated in the war of 
1861-65, and as introductory want to call attention to some facts 
that led up to the war. 

There is a tendency, a disposition by some in the South to forget 
the past, to treat the history of the past as a closed book, and teach 
our children to let the book forever remain closed. This would be 
gladly done by every man in the South who honestly wore the gray, 
if it did not present us to the world as accepting the explanations 
of the fanatics of the North as the true causes of the war, and the 
unfriendliness of the sections against our people and our domestic 
laws and institutions. 

We will designate the people of the two sections, North and 
South ; one we will call Puritans, the other Cavaliers. Hume, the 
English historian, and McCauley, with other European writers, say : 
"The Puritans of England, up to the date of the Stuarts, looked 
upon all who did not agree with them as Amalekites, idolaters, 
whom they, the Puritans, as God's only chosen people, were or- 
dained and commissioned to punish and bring into the Puritan fold, " 
and it was this stock says C. B. Taylor, in his " History of the 
United States," came over in the Mayflower (their ark) and brought 
with them their commissions to burn witches, burn the tongues of 
Quakers and do other things in God's holy name, like dictating 
morals and manners to the people of the South. 

The Southerners were immigrants from England, Scotland, France 
and all Europe, without special commissions from the Lord to teach 
their fellowman how to worship, The people who settled in the 
South in religion were Protestants, Catholics, Jews, who tolerated 
each other as men and brothers. They had divorced church and 
state, giving every man the right to worship God as he believed. 

We admit for argument's sake that the Puritan or New Englander 
was God's chosen people and New England his inheritance. When 
we come to read the history of these people at this day we cannot 
but view with horror the atrocities perpetrated upon the Narra- 
gansett Indians in 1675, and question if God's own people would 
commit such acts. When we read in Irving's " History of New 
York," how the cute men of New England counterfeited the local 
currency of the Dutch, cheating them out of their gold, herrings 
and cheese, makes us again. question if these early Puritan pilgrims 
were God's chosen people. Now, for a few notes from early his- 
tory to show the attitude of the two sections, which will enable 
the student to hunt up the full details. Of the incident of the tea 
tax which brought on the struggle between the English crown and 
the colonies, Senator Geo. F. Hoar says: "The Southern colonies 
had not the slightest particle of personal interest." See Mont- 
gomery's U. S. History. 

Shortly after the Declaration of Independence there was a formal 
move made to form a compact of states. When the draft of a con- 



22 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

stitution was under discussion, Rutledge, of South Carolina, objected 
to its provisions. Why? Because he doubted the good faith of 
those chosen people of God who even this early were trying to make 
the Southern colonies subject to the whims and dictation of the 
Eastern colonies. Some incidents in the time when Washington was 
given command of the Colonial army : In November, 1775, after 
Washington had been some months in command of the New England 
troops at Boston, he wrote: "Such a mercenary spirit pervades 
the whole that I should not be surprised at any disaster that may 
happen. * * * Could I have forseen what I have experienced 
and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth would 
have induced me to accept this command." 

"In December, 1775, John Adams, a member of the Marine Com- 
mittee in the Continental Congress, opposed the appointment of 
John Paul Jones to a captaincy in the navy, whose election Joseph 
Hewes was advocating. Afterwards He wes wrote : "The attitude 
of Mr. Adams was in keeping with the always imperious and often 
arrogant tone of the Masachussetts people at that time." 

"In November, 1776, the British brigantine Active, loaded with 
clothing for Gen. Burgoyne's army, was captured off the coast of 
Cape Breton by the Alfred, commanded by Capt. John Paul Jones. 
He appointed " Lieutenant Spooner " to take command of the prize, 
to proceed with all haste to Edenton, North Carolina, and deliver 
her to "Robert Smith, Esquire," who was the partner of Joseph 
Hewes, through whose influence, being a member of the Marine 
Committee in the Continental Congress, Jones had been appointed 
Senior First Lieutenant in the navy. But "Lieutenant Spooner" 
carried the prize to Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and delivered it to 
his brother, who was prize agent." 

"When John Paul Jones, commanding the Ranger, was in St. 
George's Channel planning a descent on the Irish coast by night in 
order to surprise and capture the Drake, a twenty-gun British ship, 
his New England officers would not consent to the movement. 
Jones says in his "Narrative": "This project, however, greatly 
alarmed my lieutenants ; they were poor, they said, and their ob- 
ject was gain, not honor ; they accordingly excited disobedience 
among the ship's company, by persuading them that they had a 
right to determine whether the measures adopted by me were well 
concerted or not." 

"In 1787 the Congress of the Confederation, eight States repre- 
sented, sold to a number of Northern gentlemen (including Dr. 
Manasseh Cutler, Gen. Ruf us Putnam, Gen. S. H. Parsons and Col. 
William Duer) 5,000,000 acres of land in Ohio, and accepted for 
payment $3, 500, 000 of "Continental money," which was then worth 
one-eighth of its face value. In other words, these gentlemen pur- 
chased a tract of land as large as the State of New Jersey at less 
than nine cents per acre, thus laying the foundations for the "ex- 
pansion " of New Englaed in the lands which Virginia had ceded 
for the common benefit of all the States." 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFEPSON DAVIS. 23 

" During the war of 1812 John Lowell published in Boston a paper 
which he called "The Road to Ruin," in which (as quoted by Carey 
in his " Olive Branch") he thus spoke of the trading class of the 
people : "They engage in lawless speculations, sneer at restraints 
of conscience, laugh at perjury, mock at legal restraints, and ac- 
quire an ill-gotten wealth at the expense of public morals," &c, 
thus manifesting a disposition which, in the estimation of some 
people, has not entirely disappeared yet, as we may infer from 
this remark of Senator Bradley, of Kentucky, in a speech he deliv- 
ered in the Senate on the 4th of May, 1909 : " Mr. President," he 
said, " one more word and I am through. Give to Kentucky fair 
protection of her interests "—the right, he meant, to "prosper" 
at the expense of other States — " and I guarantee you it will be but 
a short time until Kentucky is as certainly a Republican State as 
the great State of Massachusetts. " 

All these quototions from early history is to give an idea of what 
the people the South had to deal with in 1861-65, and their commer- 
cialism always with them above principle ; now a few more quo- 
tations : 

New England in the Old Union. 

"While the people of New England were fretting about the non- 
intercourse acts of Jefferson's Administration, "Algernon Sidney " 
(probably J. Q. Adams) addressed "An Appeal " to them (see State 
Papers, 2d Sess., 10th Cong.) in which this question appears : "Re- 
cur to the period between peace and the present Government. Did 
not the commercial States enrich themselves at the expense of the 
agricultural?" And 

" Referring to this same period, and particularly to the disap- 
pearance of the wealthy men of Colonial times, Hildreth says in 
his ' ' History of the United States : " "In their place a new moneyed 
class had sprung up, especially in the Eastern States, men who had 
grown rich in the course of the war as sutlers, by privateering, by 
speculations in the fluctuating paper money, and by other opera- 
tions not always of the most honorable kind." Vol. Ill, p. 465. 

"In 1790, while Congress was planning a new tariff bill, Massa- 
chusetts sent a petition asking for "a remission of duties on all 
the dutiable articles used in the fisheries," whether re-exported or 
not — salt, rum, tea, sugar, molasses, iron, coarse woolens, lines and 
hooks, sailcloth, cordage and tonnage, "and also premiums and 
bounties." And this petition asked for all these special favors for 
a people to whom John Jay thus referred in the Federalist about 
two years before this : " With France and with Britain we are rivals 
in the fisheries, and can supply their markets cheaper than they can 
themselves, notwithstanding any efforts to prevent it by bounties 
on their own or duties on foreign fish." 

Now we will take up facts closer to 1861-65. 

"As a result of sectional privileges and incidental favors enjoyed 



24 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

by the North from the beginning of the Union, Kettell calculates 
that the annual flow of money from the South to the North at the 
time he wrote (1860) amounted to $231,500,000, and the hope that 
the South could ever free herself from her vassalage had utterly 
vanished, since at that time the Senate of the United States was 
composed of thirty Southern and thirty-six Northern members, and 
some of the territories were about ready to come in and strengthen 
the North. 

' ' To all this evidence it is hardly necessary to add that no North- 
erner has ever charged that any Southern statesman ever asked for 
the passage of a law to enable any Southern man, corporation or 
State to "prosper" at the expense of the Northern States. Nor 
can there be any doubt of the truth of the statement in ' ' The Ori- 
gin of the Late War," a work written by George Lunt, a Massa- 
chusetts lawyer. He says : "Of four several compromises between 
the two sections since the Revolutionary War, each has been kept 
by the South and violated by the North." 

This is the evidence given by a Northern man who had no inter- 
est in the South. 

The New Englander and Slavery. 

1. In 1638 — eighteen years after that noted Jamestown incident — 
the Salem slave-ship, the " Desire," brought into Massachusetts a 
number of negroes, and found ready sale for them, This, says 
Moore ("Notes," &c.) "was not a private individual speculation ; 
it was the enterprise of the authorities of the Colony." But in one 
volume of the "American History Stories," published by the "Ed- 
ucational Publishing Company," of Boston, it is said that the Geor- 
gians introduced slavery into their Colony because they "were not 
a God-fearing people as were the Puritans and Quakers. " And this 
book has found its way into Southern schools ! 

2. In 1641 Massachusetts adopted her " body of liberties" as a 
written Constitution of Government, in which this provision occurs : 

" There shall never be any bond slavery, villanage or captivity 
amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars and such 
strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us " — many In- 
dians " willingly " accepting slavery in preference to death when 
permitted to choose. 

3. In 1643 Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New 
Haven formed a Confederation, mutually agreeing, among other 
stipulations, to surrender fugitive slaves. 

4. In 1676 the New Englanders exterminated the Indian tribe 
which under Massasoit had befriended them for half a century, 
killing six hundred men and one thousand women and children in 
one battle and selling the few survivors as slaves, among these 
being the nine-year-old grandson of Massasoit. He was shipped to 
Bermuda ; and this was done after Rev. Samuel Arnold, of Marsh- 
field, and Rev. John Cotton, of Plymouth, had advised that he be 
"butchered." 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 25 

5. In 1768, according to a British report (See Kettell) 6,700 ne- 
groes were shipped by Northern slavers from the west coast of 
Africa ; and, if we adopt the Jamaica price, these traders carried 
home more than one million of dollars. 

6. In October, 1905, according to the New York Evening Post, an 
insurance policy was shown to a gentleman in that city which was 
issued to a New England Company, "about 1860," on a cargo of 
slaves. 

7. The slave trade was one of the most gainful employments of 
New England ships up to 1861. In that year the Nightingale, com- 
manded by Francis Bowen, of Boston, was captured on the African 
coast, having on board 961 negroes, and was "expecting more," 
and while she was being captured nine other slaves escaped. Na- 
val War Records, Vol. I. 

Slavery being unprofitable in Massachusetts it was a common 
practice to give away negro children " like puppy dogs." 

I do not suppose this can be denied by any fanatic for its history. 

Adopting the rate of increase of the colored population of this 
country from 1880 to 1890 as the normal rate, per decade, I find 
that after the courts of Massachusetts began to decide that the 
children of slaves were free at their birth, the colored population 
of that State, between 1800 and 1830, fell 2,386 below what it should 
have been. What became of these unfortunate beings we may 
never know ; but possibly the legislature of North Carolina had 
them in mind when, in 1786, it enacted that any person who brought 
a slave into this State from a State which had made provision for 
the liberation of its slaves, " should enter into a bond with suffi- 
cient surety in the sum of fifty pounds " for the removal of the 
slave back to the State whence he brought him ; and that if he 
failed to comply with the requirement of the bond he should be 
liable to a fine of one hundred dollars. 

In 1788 Massachusetts adopted a regulation that negroes from 
other States, bond or free, could not settle in her borders unless 
they carried with them certificates of citizenship, and that a vio- 
lator of the law should be flogged if he refused to leave the State 
after being warned by a justice of the peace. 

One of the first laws adopted by the State of Ohio, which had 
been settled chiefly by New Englanders, was that no colored per- 
son from another State should migrate to Ohio, and that if any 
white man carried one to that State he should give a $500 bond that 
the black man should not " come upon the town " to be supported. 

William Elsey Connelley, who was a strong friend of John Brown, 
declares in "An Appeal to the Record" that the famous "Emigrant 
Aid Company" which made war on Southerners in Kansas, was 
organized " for speculative purposes ; " and Rev. Dr. Edward Ever- 
ett Hale, in his "Kansas and Nebraska," which was published in 
1854, represents the movement to exclude Southerners from those 
territories to be partly, if not wholly, intended to convert them into 



26 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

"wealthy colonies " for the benefit of the "factories" of Massa- 
chusetts. 

While Garrison's little band were sending their abolition petitions 
over the country and into the halls of Congress, Franklin Pierce, a 
Representative in Congress from New Hampshire, said in a speech 
delivered during the session which commenced in December, 1837 : 
"I am unwilling that any imputation shall rest upon the North in 
consequence of the misguided and fanatical zeal of a few — compar- 
atively very few — who, however honest may have been their pur- 
poses; have, I believe, done incalculable mischief , and whose move- 
ments, I know, receive no more sanction at the North than they do 
at the South ; " and as late as January, 1850, Samuel S. Phelps, a 
Vermont Senator, referring in a speech to what he considered un- 
reasonable complaints on the part of Southerners, said : "As to 
what has been offensively said at the North, this is a land of free 
speech ; and what is to be done with people who believe themselves 
charged with a mission, not only to amend the Constitution framed 
by the wisdom of our fathers, but also to assist the Almighty in the 
correction of sundry mistakes which they have discoyered in His 
works?" 

In the inaugural address of Robert J. Walker, a Pennsylvanian 
and an emancipationist, who had been appointed by President 
Buchanan Governor of Kansas, he exposed the hypocrisy of the 
" free-soilers " by declaring that " in their so-called Constitution, 
formed at Topeka, they deemed, that entire race (negroes) so infe- 
rior and degraded as to exclude them all forever from Kansas, 
whether they be bond or free "—the provision having been adopted 
by more than four-fifths of the votes. 

In the Constitution of Indiana, which was adopted in 1851, after 
the provision that "no negro or mulatto shall have the right of 
suffrage," it is declared that " no negro or mulatto shall come into 
or settle in the State." And Indiana, be it remembered, was set- 
tled mainly by New Englanders. 

Up to the time of the adoption of the 14th amendment no colored 
person could vote in any Northern State east of the Hudson river, 
nor in Connecticut ; and in the few other States where he was not 
absolutely disfranchised, the right to vote was practically nullified 
by the requirement of qualifications possessed by few colored per- 
sons. In Massachusetts, for example, the voter had to be able to 
read, write, and had to own a free-hold estate " of the annual in- 
come of three pounds." 

In volume VII, for example, of John Clark Ridpath's pretentious 
" History of the World," referring to this "moral awakening," he 
says : "The conscience of the nation " — the North being the "na- 
tion " — "was roused, and the belief began to prevail that slavery 
was wrong per se and ought to be destroyed," the presumption 
being that some competent power had authorized the "nation " to 
destroy it. But the books which Mr. Ridpath had studied were not 
written for the purpose of dealing fairly with the South, as the 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 27 

reader will perceive if he will examine the pages of Belford's 
"History of the United States," Benton's "Thirty Years' View" 
and Lippincott's "Gazetteer" (1857). In these he will discover 
that, in a few years after the admission of Missouri, attacks on 
abolitionists in the North commenced, which may be summed up 
briefly as follows : 

In 1834 an angry mob broke up the school of Prudence Crandall, 
in Canterbury, Connecticut, because she admitted negro children 
as pupils, and destroyed valuable property. She was imprisoned 
in the town jail, 

Just thousands of these inconsistencies can be shown, but it is 
needless. We will now take up 

How the North Respects Compacts. 

On April 1, 1783, while the Congress of the Confederation was 
planning at the urgent request of Northerners, to have the Articles 
of Confederation amended so as to substitute population for land as 
a basis of taxation in each State, and Southerners were objecting 
to New England's demand that all slaves should be included in a 
State's "Federal population," Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts, gave 
as " a cogent reason for hastening that business, that the Eastern 
States, at the invitation of Massachusetts, were, with New York, 
about to form a Convention for regulating matters of common con- 
cern " — to violate the second clause of the 6th of " The Articles of 
Confederation." 

This threat induced the Southerners, who were anxious to per- 
petuate the Union, to consent to include three-fifths of the slaves 
in the Federal population. But when the Convention of 1787 was 
endeavoring to agree upon a just basis on which "representatives 
and direct taxes " should be apportioned among the States, New 
England strongly insisted that no slaves be included in the Federal 
population. That is to say : It was just to apportion the burdens 
of the members of the Confederation according to their wealth- 
producing power, but it was unjust to permit the Southern States 
to be represented in the law-making body of the Union in propor- 
tion to their wealth-producing power, And this old spirit of sec- 
tional injustice appears among the demands of the Hartford Con- 
vention. 

In 1787 the famous Ordinance for the govornment of the North- 
west Territory was adopted by eight States, and the 5,000,000 acres 
of land in Ohio were sold by the same States, although the pledge 
to the land States in 1780 declared that the lands should be granted 
or settled '* under such regulations as shall hereafter be agreed 
on by the United States in Congress assembled, or nine or more of 
them. 

When Georgia and North Carolina ceded the lands which became 
Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, it was expressly agreed be- 
tween them and "the United States," that "no regulations made 



28 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

or to be made shall tend to emancipate slaves" in the ceded terri- 
tory. 

When Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia made cessions of 
their "waste lands" one of the conditions agreed to by all parties 
was that these lands should be "considered as a common fund for 
the use and benefit" of all the States, * * * "according to their 
usual respective proportions in the general charge and expenditure 
and shall faithfully and bona fide disposed of for that purpose, and 
for no other use or purpose whatsoever." But the reports of the 
General Land Office show that this condition has been shamefully 
disregarded. 

When the lands west of the Mississippi were purchased, and the 
taxing system of the Federal government compelled the Southern 
people to contribute most of the purchase money, it cannot be 
claimed that it was intended or that it would be just to deny that 
these lands should be "considered as a common fund for the use 
and benefit" of all the States. But, as Senator Plumb, of Kansas, 
said in the United States Senate on September 25, 1888, these 
lands have been so disposed of as to "multiply, develop and 
strengthen the North." 

The Constitution declares that "if a person charged in any State 
with treason, felony or other crime" flees to another State, the lat- 
ter shall, on demand of the Governor of the injured State, surrender 
him ; but when two of the criminals who served under John Brown 
when he invaded Virginia, fled, one to Ohio and the other to Iowa, 
the Governors of those States refused to comply with the demand 
of the Governor of Virginia for their surrender. 

When the "more perfect Union" was formed, each State retained 
what Mr. Jefferson called "interior government," and it is beyond 
question that the new Constitution would have been unanimously 
rejected if it had been expected that the Federal government would 
ever assume to interfere in matters purely local, but "the North" 
forced the 14th amendment into the Constitution by destroying 
some of the States and erecting in them governments which did 
not represent the hereditary citizens ; and this amendment subjects 
the States to the offensive supervision of judges who have for forty 
years been chosen by "the North." 

The Constitution declares that "no new State shall be formed or 
erected within the jurisdiction of any other State ;" but in 1863 
thirty-nine of Virginia's counties were cut off by "the North" and 
erected into West Virginia. 

When Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania ; Zachariah Chandler, 
of Michigan ; Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, and other leaders of the 
Republican party were balked in their scheme to degrade and insult 
the Southern people by inserting into the Constitution their 14th 
amendment, because no Southern State would consent to its own 
degradation, and only twenty-one of the other States were willing 
to assist in the disgraceful movement, these statesmen passed their 
"reconstruction measures," destroyed the Southern States, and 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS 29 

erected in the borders of each what was known as a ' 'carpet-bag 
government," in violation of the fundamental principles for which 
our forefathers contended in the Revolutionary War, in violation 
of well known provisions of the Compact of Union between the 
States and in violation o£ their official oaths. Thousands of hered- 
itary voters were disfranchised, the "carpet-bagger" who was not a 
citizen was given supervision of the election for members of a so- 
called Constitutional Convention in each province, and a ballot was 
placed in the hand of every colored man (although no such persons 
could vote in Pennsylvania, Ohio or Michigan). Of the character 
of these "carpet-bag" governments the reader may get a glimpse 
in the following statement made by Charles Nordhoff (a Prussian) 
who in those days was a trusted correspondent of the New York 
Herald : 

One of the contributors to Rice's "Reminiscences," &c, was 
George W. Julian, the "Free Soil" candidate for vice-president in 
1852, an Indiana congressman from 1860 to 1870, and an advocate 
of confiscating all the property of "rebels." Discussing the issu- 
ance of Lincoln's "emancipation proclamation," he says : 

"Few subjects have been more debated and less understood than 
the Proclamation of Emancipation. Mr. Lincoln was himself op- 
posed to the measure." 

The sole object of the invasion and subjugation of the Confed- 
erate States must, therefore, have been to drive them back into the 
Union and keep them as "wealthy colonies ;" and the time may 
not be far off when just men will wonder what sort of amoral code 
it was which held that all generations of Southerners were bound 
to labor for the "prosperity" of the North because their Revolu- 
tionary ancestors carried their States into a partnership with the 
Northern States. 

Historic Injustice to Southern Sentiment About Emanci- 
pation. 

On February 24, 1824, Thomas Jefferson addressed a letter to 
Jared Sparks, a New Englander, who then edited the North Amer- 
ican Review, urging his plans for emancipating the slaves and de- 
porting them to Sierra Leone ; and on January 25, 1832, the Vir- 
ginia House of Delegates passed a resolution declaring it "expedient 
to adopt some legislative enactment for the abolition of slavery." 

During the session of Congress which began on the first Monday 
of December, 1829, Senator Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, while 
the Foot resolution was being discussed, said : "I can truly say that 
slavery, in the abstract, has but few advocates or defenders in the 
slave-holding States, and that slavery as it is, an hereditary insti- 
tution, descended upon us from our ancestors, would have fewer 
advocates among us than it has, if those that have nothing to do 
with the subject would only let us alone. The sentiment in favor 



30 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

of slavery was much weaker before those intermeddlers began their 
operations than it is at present." 

Northern Blindness of Facts. 

Searching among the most trustworthy records of the social and 
political institutions of ancient and mediaeval nations for the causes 
which led to periods of exceptional moral degradation, I have been 
convinced by Gibbon, Milman, Hallam and others that every such 
period has followed and resulted from a repudiation of the popular 
divinities by the honored leaders of the people and the consequent 
weakening of the binding power of their hereditary moral code. 
This repudiation often, if not invariably, resulted from hostile con- 
flicts between nations or tribes which had inherited different relig- 
ious systems and worshipped different gods, and in many cases 
there resulted an infidelity in both combatants. The struggle to 
introduce Christianity into the Roman empire, with its provinces 
and dependencies worshipping all sorts of gods, from a bull up to 
Jupiter, furnishes many illustrations of this truth ; appalling pic- 
tures of depravity throughout the Byzantine empire, in France, in 
Asia Minor, and in some of the famous cities during three or four 
centuries following the decree adopting Christianity. 

The census of 1850 shows that in Virginia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi there were 291,626 land- 
holders, of whom 91,797 owned no slaves. And this census shows 
that, counting five white persons to a family, 50 per cent, of the 
families in these six Southern States owned no farms, and that the 
farmless families in Ohio were 63 per cent, of the total. Possibly 
the Tribune and Mr. Julian, if they had desired to know the truth, 
may have discovered that thousands of lawyers, doctors, teachers, 
merchants, preachers, railroad and steamboat employees, and per- 
sons engaged in other business occupations had no use for farms 
or slaves. 

In the summer of 1863, President Lincoln and his followers in 
Congress cut off thirty-nine Virginia counties and admitted them 
into partnership with the other States as West Virginia. This was 
in violation of an express provision of that Constitution which all 
these statesmen had solemnly sworn to support ; and if anything 
like this had been done in private life, the perpetrators would have 
been rewarded by a sojourn in some penitentiary. 

Thus we have it acknowledged by the highest authority that the 
Republican party entered upon that career which seems to challenge 
formidable opposition in the Northern States, under the leadership 
of a man who rejected the only claim of our Revolutionary sires 
which the civilized world has admitted to have been a valid excuse 
for overthrowing British rule in the thirteen States and thus re-es- 
tablished, so far as he could, the mediaeval rule for the guidance of 
strong communities when dealing with weak ones ; who repudiated 
the binding force of an official oath and thus destroyed the sanctity 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 31 

of a solemn appeal to the Almighty and the safeguards against 
perjury in courts of justice ; and who taught his followers that in 
our dealings with our fellowmen we have no guide above expedi- 
ency. 

The Hon. Wm. E. Seward, Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of State, 
said, "There is a higher power than the Constitution which regu- 
lates our authority over domain. Slavery must be abolished and 
we must do it." Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, said, 
"The fugitive slave law is filled with horror. We are bound to dis- 
obey this act." William Lloyd Garrison said, "The Union is a lie, 
the American Union is an imposture, a covenant with death and 
agreement with hell. We are for its overthrow. Up with the flag 
of disunion that we may have a free republic of our own. " Joshua 
R. Giddings said, ' 'I look forward to the day when servile insur- 
rection in the South will come, when the black man, armed with 
British bayonets, led by British officers, shall assert his freedom 
and wage a war of extermination against his master. " Horace 
Greely said, "The Union is not worth preserving ; it is not worth 
supporting in connection with the South." Anson P. Burlingame 
said, "The times demand and we must have an anti-slavery consti- 
tution, an anti-slavery Bible and anti-slavery God." And these 
same sentiments filled the abolitionist party platform that nomi- 
nated Mr. Lincoln in 1860 for President of the United States. 

At the opening of the 36th Congress, first session, the House 
stood upon roll call, 109 Republicans or Radicals to 101 Democrats, 
and this terrible state of affairs confronted those lovers of the 
Union who had hoped against hope to save the Union from the de- 
struction this radical party was rushing it. The contest for Speaker 
of the House was closely drawn. John Sherman, of Ohio, drew to 
him all his party but three votes. After seven weeks of balloting 
without election Sherman withdrew from the race and Wm. Pen- 
nington, of New Jersey, Republican, was elected by one vote. The 
Kansas and other questions were before Congress to keep in agita- 
tion the public mind. The most potent of all these was that ques- 
tion of squatter sovereignty. Mr. Davis offered a set of resolu- 
tions on Feb. 2, 1860, hoping to stay the dreadful result that must 
follow if the fanatics of the North persisted in carrying out their 
designs. The Northern Democrats arrayed themselves against the 
South on this great question with Stephen A. Douglass. Now came 
the Charleston convention. On April 23, 1860, the National Demo- 
cratic Convention was called to order in the city of Charleston, 
S. C, to nominate a candidate for president. There was a wide 
difference of opinion in the convention on the subject of admitting: 
slavery into the new territories. Mr. Stephen A. Douglass was the 
leader of the squatter sovereignty wing of the party. All the del- 
egates from the North, West and South who opposed the extension 
of slavery flocked to the Douglass banner. The old organization, 
the strict constructionists of the Constitution, stood solidly for and 
demanded equal rights for the South under the Constitution. After 



32 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

the convention had gotten into working order the very first ballot 
disclosed the great sectional line drawn. The majority report on 
platform resolved that it was the duty of the Federal Government 
to protect all citizens in their rights of property and persons in the 
territories, and it was the duty of the Government to admit the 
Territories when the Government should be lawfully organized, 
whether slavery should be permitted or abolished. 

The minority report recognized the great difference of opinion 
between the two wings of the party, and resolved to abide by the 
decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States upon the ques- 
tions of constitutional law. They thus ignored the decisions of the 
Supreme Court previously made and promulgated on this question, 
but promised to abide by some future decisions. Those who saw 
the animus of this minority report saw that it merely meant to 
differ with the majority report on all questions and stood ready to 
annul the opinions of the court by one pretext or another. 

The South demanded a distinct expression by the convention on 
this question of Supreme Court decisions ; when the vote was taken 
some States voted as a unit, others voted by the preference of their 
individual delegates. Pennsylvania votes made of the minority a 
majority. The Cotton State delegates saw at once the inexpedi- 
ency of voting that in future the Democrats would abide by the 
decisions of the Supreme Court. To do this was to acknowledge 
that the decisions of that court already made were not final. The 
Cotton States refused to vote as did the Old Line Democrats and 
the resolution was lost. The vote of the convention to observe the 
two-thirds rule destroyed all Mr. Douglass' chance for the nomi- 
nation, but his friends would have Douglass or nobody. On April 
30, Louisiana, Alabama and Oregon withdrew from the convention. 
The chairman of the convention, Caleb Cushing, withdrew a part 
of the Massachusetts delegation. Then the convention passed a 
resolution to replace the delegates who left with new delegates. 
On May 1 Georgia withdrew from the convention. Right in this 
convention Massachusetts voted twenty-six times her forty-nine 
votes for Jefferson Davis as the Democratic party nominee for the 
presidency and Benj. F. Butler led this vote. No nomination was 
made at Charleston. On June 18 the convention adjourned to meet 
at Baltimore city, Md. 

At Baltimore the convention met again, Caleb Cushing still in 
the chair. Douglass was nominated by one wing of the party, Mr. 
Breckenridge by the other. The Republicans nominated Mr. Lin- 
coln and over our divided house he was elected President by part 
of the people of the United States with the express understanding 
that he would rule in hostility to the South, while pretending to 
act as the guardian of the whole country. After Mr. Lincoln's in- 
auguration the whole South was in a state of agitation ; the fanat- 
ics of the North were urging on the destruction they desired of the 
Union and the constitutional right of slavery. South Carolina, in 
convention, seceded; then followed Mississippi. Mr. Davis then 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 33 

withdrew from the Senate of the United States, making one of the 
most pathetic appeals ever made before that body for the Union. He 
remained in Washington city ill for more than one week, hoping he 
would be arrested ; that the test of the states' right to withdraw 
from the Union could be made before the courts. "I hope, " he 
said to Col. Chestnut, "the President will act with moderation and 
will not listen to his bad advisers, the fanatics and abolitionists. 
If they will only give me time all is not lost. If these fanatics rule 
with violence on one side and extreme sense of wrong on our side 
the Union will be dissolved and woe must follow to the country." 
Mr. Davis sent telegrams and letters all over the South, begging 
and asking postponement of action, hoping in his love for the Union 
to save it from destruction and ruin. When all hope was gone Mr. 
Davis left Washington his heart bowed in sorrow. He arrived in 
Mississippi, his home, and was appointed commander-in-chief of 
the State's forces and went about the work of getting the State 
into defensive attitude. The Montgomery Convention met to or- 
ganize the Confederate Government, elect provisional officers and 
do such other things as was necessary for the new government now 
that the war cloud had burst over the land. The South had with- 
drawn from the Union of States ; a statesman was needed as well 
as a trained soldier. A man with a will to do, a soul to dare. In 
Mr. Davis we found the ideal man to guide the destinies of the in- 
fant republic, organize her civil departments and steer the ship 
clear of the rocks and breakers of those turbulent times. By com- 
mon assent all the delegates assembled in convention at Montgom- 
ery, Ala., chose Mr. Davis as the best-fitted man as first President 
of the young Confederacy. In 1862 he was elected by the votes of 
all the people of the seceding states Constitutional President of the 
Confederate States of America. 

Positively, Mr. Davis did not seek the position ; the position 
sought him. After the State of Mississippi seceded from the Union, 
Mr. Davis was appointed by the Governor commander-in-chief of 
the State forces, and he was as much astonished as man could be 
when the Montgomery convention chose him President. It is ab- 
surd for the writers and historians of the North to insist, as they 
do, that Mr. Davis was the choice of the politicians and not of the 
whole people of the South. He was absolutely the people's choice. 
The movement of the South 1861 was sudden and it was intense it 
is true, but it was not the work of politicians ; it was the action of 
a people who had been rudely awakened form their dream of secur- 
ity. A great danger presented itself to the whole South. A neces- 
sity for quick action confronted the people. Their liberty and hap- 
piness were threatened by the fanatics who had gotten control of 
the Government power, and these people left the South but one 
course ; that was separation from the union of States. 

When Mr. Davis received official notice of his appointment as 
Provisional President of the Confederacy, as I said before, he was 
astonished, and had he followed the bent of his own inclination he 



34 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

would have declined the honor ; but his loyalty to the South, his 
love of the people, his devotion to duty, made him cast aside all 
thoughts of self and surrender himself to the good of his people 
and his beloved South. And I want to impress upon the generation 
of today this fact : We of the past know it is true, that Jefferson 
Davis was the most unselfish patriot and friend that ever lived — 
gentle in manner, kind in disposition, with an open hand of charity 
for all who needed his help, with a devotion to duty, with faith in 
God's help, Jefferson Davis was the ideal man of his day. 

After Mr. Davis was inaugurated President of the Confederate 
States, so great was his love for the Union and its perpetuation and 
his hope that no blood would be shed, he carried out and appointed 
the peace commission as authorized by the provisional congress. 
This commission was composed of the South' s best and patriotic 
citizens, A. B. Roman, Louisiana ; Martin J. Crawford, Georgia ; 
John B. Forsyth, Alabama. The political views of these eentle- 
men had no weight with Mr. Davis in making the appointments. 
Judge Roman, of Louisiana, was a whig ; Mr. Crawford, Georgia, 
a State's right Democrat and Mr. Forsyth an ardent and zealous 
Douglass man. He gave them no instructions but left all to their 
patriotism and honest conviction of right, and this alone was their 
guide. But nothing came of this attempt upon the part of the 
South to prevent bloodshed. This commission went to Washington 
city and were deceived to such an extent by the new President's 
advisors, the fanatical leaders of the North that had determined 
upon war and only war, they left in sorrow when their last hope of 
peace had fled. I cannot go into details of this story of deception 
and fraud played upon our commission by Mr. Lincoln and his Cab- 
inet to gain time ; it is obtainable by all who care to read it. 

War was now upon us. Its iron hand was raised to crush the Con- 
federacy. All promises had been broken by the Northern leaders ; 
the tie that bound us as a union broken by the treachery of the 
fanatical North. Mr. Lincoln had called for troops to coerce the 
South back into an unbearable union. On May 6, 1861, the Army 
of the Confederate States was lawfully established in lieu of the 
provisional army and war was on. 

"No man," said an eminent writer, "unless it was Washington, 
was ever placed in a position so fraught with danger, so burdened 
with cares and responsibilities, as was Mr. Davis when he became 
President of the Confederacy. " With this writer I most heartily 
concur and go further and say no man could have filled the position 
and performed the duties of the office better than Mr. Davis. His 
name will be revered by all Southern men, women and children. 
His place will be high upon the scroll of fame ; no name will be 
written in truthful history above that of Mr. Davis. His grand 
character, genial nature, honesty of purpose, adherence to prin- 
ciple made him the idol of our people. And I do believe the day 
will come when in the whole country Jefferson Davis will be held 
as the greatest American patriot that ever lived. 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 35 

I can fully understand whv the press, the pulpit and the histor- 
ians of the North slander Mr. Davis. They are paid for it. What- 
ever slander is put forth by the press, pulpit or speaker of the 
North is taken by the Northern people as gospel truth. These peo- 
ple do not want the truth ; they don't care for it. But I cannot 
understand how any man who wore the gray coat of the Confed- 
eracy and honestly believed in the principle for which he fought 
can ever harshly criticize Mr. Davis's work as President of the 
Confederate States. I grant it that Mr. Davis's public life is pub- 
lic property and every man has a right to his personal opinion. But 
whenever a Confederate soldier speaks lightly of President Davis 
and questions his acts as President of the Confederacy, he puts it 
into the power of our Enemies to say we had not the faith we pro- 
fessed in our leader nor our cause. It is a fact that all the criti- 
cisms made of Mr. Davis and his work, as a rule, are made in total 
ignorance of the facts and conditions that surrounded the case upon 
which Mr. Davis acted and with which so much fault is found by 
his critics. I have often heard Mr. Davis blamed in the most sense- 
less manner by people who have nothing better upon which to base 
their criticisms than some slanderous article they read in a news- 
paper, novel or magazine. These people do not inform themselves 
yet they loudly proclaim. ' 'They pin their opinions to no man's coat 
sleeve" and yet they will base an opinion upon some very irrespon- 
sible Northern publication. 

But the climax of bosh is to blame Mr. Davis for the failure of the 
Confederacy to establish its independence. If those people who blame 
him would simply read current history they would soon discover 
how little they knew about the real cause of the Confederacy's col- 
lapse. No man, I do not care who he might have been nor what 
may have been his ability, had he been in the Presidential chair of 
the Confederacy in 1864-5 could have done more than Mr. Davis 
did do to avert the end and change the result. No power on earth, 
no power but that of God's, could have stayed the collapse of the 
Confederacy after those twin monsters, hunger and starvation, 
forced our gates. These monsters hastened the end. "The dark 
shadows of slander always follow the defeated and the leaders of 
a defeated cause are always the victims ;" they must suffer. Their 
wisest counsel, their purest motives are distorted by slander and 
misrepresentation into acts of treachery to the people and the cause 
they love. The most self-sacrificing acts are made by slander and 
misrepresentation to look like the blackest villainies, and it is a 
well-known fact that there have been men who wore the garb of 
the Confederate soldier that dared to impugn and misrepresent 
Robert E. Lee. How then was it possible for Mr. Davis to escape 
the malignity of the tongues that would assail Robert E. Lee, 
the purest character the world has ever known. Slander and hatred 
was not born in 1861-65 ; nor was their birthplace the South. These 
monsters began their existence at the birth of time. The history 
of all nations, the history of all people who fail in the cause of right 



36 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

or wrong is their leaders must suffer and the South was no excep- 
tion to this rule. No man has yet been able to point out one act of 
President Davis during his term of office that can be tortured or 
twisted into the cause of our failure. There was a multiplicity of 
causes combined that brought about the collapse of our cause, and 
I think it can truthfully be said that none of all the causes were so 
potent as those of hunger and starvation. God alone could have 
controlled these and averted the end. 

I would ask this of every man who wore the gray : Do you believe 
because we failed to establish our independence that our cause was 
unholy, unrighteous, unjust, and the principles for which we fought 
unpatriotic ? If you do believe these things take off that gray coat, 
the emblem of the past. It is the emblem of a principle that made 
you a traitor to your manhood, a traitor to your God. The princi- 
ples for which we fought and defended our homes are as holy and 
just today as they were in 1861-5. They can never die. The cause 
was truth itself. We were right in 1861, we are right now, although 
right is strangled by illegal amendments to the Constitution, enacted 
by a Congress filled with carpet-baggers, scallywags and tramps, 
who had not the right of citizenship in the Southern States by birth 
nor residence. Do not all these truths prove that when Mr. Seward 
spoke of the higher power that regulated the power of his party 
over domain was the law of might— the law which disregards the 
divine law and ignores justice and truth. 

I want to call your attention to a misstatement of a fact continu- 
ally made by the Northern people and often by our own people, i. e., 
that the South submitted her cause to the arbitration of the sword ; 
she lost, and lost her right of appeal. This statement of our case 
is false ; in fact, it is false in construction, it is false in law. We 
did not submit our cause to the arbitration of war. We left the 
union of States, exercising the legal right given us by the Consti- 
tution, and simply asked to be let alone. When armed forces in- 
vaded our States and threatened our homes, we took up arms in 
defense of our loved ones and our legal rights, and exercised the 
divine right of self-protection and self-preservation as free Ameri- 
can citizens. This, I say, is the correct statement of our position 
in 1861-5, and this will be our true position in the truthful history 
of those times. We were outnumbered and overpowered, and we 
are willing to accept the results ; but we must not be asked or ex- 
pected to say our cause was unholy or unpatriotic and our leaders 
traitors. In the light of events since the close of the Civil War, I 
think it is clear to all honest men, that the South was right in her 
position of 1861-5 and is still right. Facts are daily coming to the 
surface that should prove to those who care for truth in history, 
that it would have been just as impossible for the Confederacy to 
have succeeded under any other leadership as it was under the 
leadership of Mr. -Davis. We were shut in from all commerce with 
the outer world ; now and then a blockade runner entered our ports 
and brought us word from the outer world. We had no navy. 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS 37 

Within our gates was a relentless enemy, the Union man, who let 
no opportunity pass to convey to the enemy outside our position. 
We were surrounded by a well-armed, well-fed, well-clothed army, 
that outnumbered us two to one. Our army was poorly armed, illy 
fed and badly clothed. If we lost a man it was a gap in the ranks 
we could not fill. Yet we had the courage of conviction that our 
cause was just, but I say again of all the factors so potent in the 
collapse of our cause, none were so potent as the starvation of our 
troops and people. Human nature could not have done more than 
we did do to avert the end, and I honestly say if it had not been 
for the guiding hand of Jefferson Davis upon the helm of the ship 
of state and the invincible sword of Robert E. Lee at the head of 
our army our Appomattox would have come long before it did. 

When the end came Mr. Davis was made the victim of the slander 
and hatred of the Northern puloit and press. Behind these stood 
the fanatical politicians, vieing with each other in slandering our 
leader and our people. This was the part of their scheme to hide 
from the masses the treasure and lives it had cost the North to 
accomplish the robbery of the legal rights of the people of the 
South. 

Mr. Davis was arrested, confined in a cell at Fortrass Monroe, 
ironed like a criminal by Gen. Nelson A. Miles, unable to eat the 
coarse food given him, unable to sleep because of the constant 
tramp of the guard in his cell. What cruel, inhuman treatment, 
inflicted upon this broken old man, whose only crime was his love 
of liberty, justice, truth and patriotism. Kept in this cell, denied 
even the necessities of life for so long a time that even his very 
torturers became ashamed of their cruelty and released him on a 
bond. They indicted him for treason and then dare not try him 
before their venal courts, packed as they were by men who would 
have willingly obeyed any inhuman order of a corrupt Goverment. 
Yea, gladly would these creatures of a fanatical power hung Mr. 
Davis. Their cruel cowardly cry for his life will stand forever a 
stain upon that party made great by Lincoln's name. 

After Mr. Davis was released from prison he lived amongst the 
people of his beloved South, persecuted by a vindictive Government 
he helped to make great. He was deprived of citizenship; robbed 
of all civil rights. He was a man without a country yet he had a 
country. It was in the hearts of the Southern people. In that 
country he was the uncrowned king. If the people of the South 
or the Confederate soldier ever forgets the sacrifices made by Jef- 
ferson Davis for them then, indeed, will come the second apostacy 
of man upon earth. Ingratitude will take the place of virtue and 
the story of 1861-5 cease to be told. It will be blotted from the 
record forever. But this will never be. When the bar of truthful 
history shall judge Mr. Davis and his work, the verdict will be writ- 
ten—Jefferson Davis, the American patriot, whose adherence to 
principle, fortitude under trial, fidelity to duty, rectitude of private 



38 BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

and public life, the martyr to the cause of justice and truth. In 
life slander did not smirch him ; it cannot reach him now. 

It is the duty of every man who loves the South and her treas- 
ured memories of the past to teach the generation of today the 
truthful side of our cause and our part in the great struggle of right 
aganst might. Teach the young generation of today the causes 
that led up the war. This is far more important than the history 
of our battles that every schoolboy is familiar with. Let the truth 
be told that our boys and girls may fully understand our side of 
the great question and be able to intelligentlv defend our names 
when we have passed over into the camp grounds of eternity. There 
should be no untruthful history taught in our schools. All histories 
that are not truthful and fair should banished. Every home, every 
library, every school in the South should have a copy of Mr. Davis's 
work, "The Decline and Fall of the Confederacy." This should be 
the text book of our public schools and not the unfair, untruthful 
histories that are used -today. We should put into the hands of 
our voung people Mr. Davis's work as we put into their hands the 
Bible. It is a book that all Southern men and women can feel proud 
of. It is a book of which no honest American citizen should feel 
ashamed. It is a work stamped with true statesmanship, filled with 
patriotism. It is a clear, concise, truthful statement of the whole 
question and all facts as they existed before and during the war of 
1861-5. I do not claim for Mr. Davis infallibility nor impeccability. 
He was human like you and I. He made some mistakes and com- 
mitted some errors that may look very gigantic to us without the 
facts of the case before us ; when, in truth, if we had all the facts 
we would more than likely praise as wisdom that which we now 
condemn as folly. Human nature cannot be perfect nor can all 
men agree upon questions of public and private character, and yet 
men can be honest in their views and convictions : but I am forced 
to say, after a careful study of all the questions bearing on the 
great conflict, that I cannot concede to the leaders of the fanatical 
parties of the North of 1861-65, one particle of honesty in their atti- 
tude toward the South. Commercialism, greed and envy has much 
to do with their opinions. Their love of humanity and the negro 
was simply cant and hypocrisy of the most flimsy character. What 
they deny the negro in Massachusetts they insist he shall have in 
the South. We had the negro laborer ; the North would have him 
free ; not to help the negro, but to cripple the industries of the 
South and to keep, if possible, the Radical Party in power by the 
negro vote. Thank God, we had a people war could not destroy : 
cruelty nor persecution could not make them forget their past and 
its glories ; can we ever forget the list of crimes committed against 
our liberty, that forced upon us the calamity of war and the days 
of reconstruction? I repeat that the negro was but one factor in 
the war. Beyond him was the great principle of States' rights, of 
which Mr. Davis was alwas the South's champion and which Blaine 
and Sherman claimed for their States, California and Nevada claims 



BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 39 

today. When we formed the Confederacy we placed upon Mr. 
Davis's shoulders the toga of the Presidency as the best fitted man 
to guide our ship of state through the turbulent sea of political tur- 
moil and war. He did not seek the office. The office was forced 
upon him ; honestly, faithfully, ably and patriotically he performed 
the duties imposed upon him by the people and for the best inter- 
ests of the people. Cruelty and persecution could not weaken his 
great love for humanity nor swerve him from liberty's cause. His 
greatness of soul was beyond the small things of life. The great 
men of the times, said an eminent English prelate, are always a 
helpless mark for the coarse lies and vulgarity of a peering malice ; 
the sad, weak breath of envy always wounds those that attain dis- 
tinction. Fame cannot escape slander, greatness of soul cannot 
escape envy, and Jefferson Davis was not an exception to this rule. 

But I would say this to all men who wore the gray, do not be led 
away to harshly criticize Mr. Davis. It is your bounded duty to 
hold up to the youth of today the character of Jefferson Davis as a 
model for them. And I say without fear of contradiction if they 
will investigate for themselves his private and public life they will 
find a gentle, pure heart, a great soul, that was filled with love for 
God and his country. 

Let no man who wore the gray forget himself ever to descend 
into the mire of slander and hate with the enemies of our beloved 
leader. All that has been uttered by the pulpit, press and people 
of the North against Mr. Davis is but assertion ; this is not proof : 
abuse is not demonstration. That which we have claimed for him 
stands boldly out before the world, sustained by justice and sup- 
ported by the staff of truth. It stands unbent beneath the moun- 
tain of errors and misrepresention hurled against him by malice 
and hate. His was the soul that never forgot its greatness. His 
was the manhood that never forgot its duty to God nor man. His 
was the heart filled with Christian charity as the Master taught, 
and I do believe as implicitly as I believe in a future that Jefferson 
Davis surrendered back to his Creator an unspotted soul, unsmirched 
by treachery or deceit. The bright dawn of the day that is to pro- 
claim Jefferson Davis the greatest of. American patriots is almost 
here : the points of the bright sun are coming up out of the night 
of malice and slander ; it will burst over the world to set no more. 
All the world will love Jefferson Davis's name as we of the South 
always have and will. 



The Confederate Soldier — The Ideal 
Soldier of the World 



When the American Colonies began their struggle to take from the King of 
England the power of government and transfer it to the people of the Colonies, 
there was gathered and mustered an invincible army of Patriots. They were 
banded together in Liberty's holy name. No such army was needed again, no 
such army was gathered again, until 1861, when the Southern States were com- 
pelled to protect themselves against the flagrant usurpation of power and the 
open violation of their constitutional rights by the fanatical party that had be- 
come possessed of the government reins. It became necessary for the South 
and her people to gather and organize an army to protect our homes and our 
legal rights. The necessity was urgent, and from this urgent necessity was born 
the Confederate Army. 

This army of Confederate Patriots was just as invincible on the field of battle 
as was the Colonial Army of 1776. And I here make this claim — that the army 
of 1861-65 was not conquered by the army of coercion sent by the fanatics of 
the North against us. We were defeated by that monster — starvation— the foe 
whose strength conquers the bravest. 

The Confederate Army was a gathering of ideal soldiers. No such army will 
ever again be gathered, unless collected from the sons of the men in gray of 
1861 65. It was composed of the intelligence and valor of the South, and I do 
not believe there ever was collected upon the face of the earth men that pos- 
sessed to a greater degree the essentials to the making of good soldiers as did 
the Confederate recruits of 1861. 

The essentials necessary to the making of good soldiers are intelligence, obedi- 
ence and courage. Courage without the force of intelligence to direct it counts 
for very little in battles. An army may be ever so brave, but, if it lacks intel- 
ligence, it cannot win victories from its more intelligent foes. 

It is conceded by all military students that the raw Confederate recruit of 1861 
developed into an efficient soldier more rapidly than any other man known to 
military history ; and this same authority agrees that the Confederate Army's 
intelligence, obedience and courage was of the highest order. This was the 
power that made the Confederate soldier so effective and so destructive of his 
opponents upon the battlefield. I shall make this claim, that the Confederate 
Army of 1861-65 was the grandest; army ever organized and the Confederate 
soldier the ideal soldier of the world ; the most intellight, obedient and courage- 
ous the world has ever known. He was also the most destructive. His intelli- 
gence to understand all orders given him by his commanders, his obedience and 
courage to execute the orders, made the man in gray the effective fighter he 
was. And this combination of the essentials made the old "Reb." of 1861-65 
invincible whenever and wherever he was not outnumbered upon the field of 
battle. 

Comrades, there was another essential we had beyond the three named. We 
had the absolute conviction that, in the sight of God and man, our cause was 
just, legal and holy. Guided by such conviction, backed by manhood, honor and 
right, could the Confederate soldier have been other than he was — the ideal sol- 
dier of the world. He loved his home, the land of his birth ; he obeyed the laws, 
and was ever ready to defend them.' He did not fight for gold. He fought in 
defence of his home. He fought for a principle which was honor, justice and 
truth combined. These are the principles that make heroes of nations. These 
principles made heroes of the men in gray who from 1861-65 were down in the 
mud and toted the gun. 



THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 41 

I do not intend, in this paper, to refer in an extended way to our grand com- 
manders who led us through the struggle. Thev have had their full share of 
praise and glory. Their names and their deeds will live forever. They deserve 
all the glory that has been showered upon them by the world. It is their's by 
right ; no power on earth can tear one leaf from their laurel-crowned brows. 

I want to talk tonight of the man who was down in the mud, the man in the 
ranks, the man who tramped under the burning sun, the man who faced the cold 
of winter, barefooted and almost naked, and carried the gun ; the man whose 
intelligence, obedience and courage during the four long years of bloody war 
made it possible for Robert E. Lee and the immortal "Stonewall" Jackson to 
plan the battles and win victories from armies double their numbers. To the 
man who marched down in the mud, badly armed, poorly clad, oft-times hungry, 
certainly belongs part of all the glory of the past. He won it ; he deserves it. 
Grand old hero in gray ! Your intelligence, obedience and courage made you the 
wonder of the world. You never were driven from the battlefield in panic and 
rout. If you were it was caused by the blundering of your officers and was not 
your fault. A grand army was the Confederate army ; a wonderful soldier was 
the man in gray. Guided by the wisdom of Lee, led by the genius of Jackson, 
aided by the dash of Stuart, Ashby and the noble others who wore the gray, 
you often grasped victory from the enemy when defeat seemed inevitable. 

Comrades, the record shows that you never fought one battle during the whole 
war that your opponents did not outnumber you, two to one, often five to one. 
The Union Army was always better armed than we were. They were better 
clothed, always well fed, and never failed to have an abundance of the best am- 
munition. In fact, they had everything that was necessary to make an army 
effective that money could purchase, and yet, with all this advantage in equiq- 
ment and numbers you, with your old flintlock gun, often drove them from the 
field of battle in panic and rout. 

Comrades, we did not have the improved guns of that day, nor the good rations, 
clothing and ammunition. But we had something better than all these. We 
had the absolute conviction that our cause was just and holy, and this gave the 
Confederate soldier the moral add physical courage, the strength that $13 per 
month and the best of rations can not give. 

We often hear the question asked, but never by a Confederate soldier, why 
it was that "Stonewall" Jackson so often disregarded all rules of military science 
as taught in the books, flinging them aside and fighting battles under conditions 
from which most military leaders would retreat ! This question can be readily 
answered by any man who followed old "Stonewall" up and down the Valley. 
And the answer is this : "Stonewall" Jackson had implicit faith in his men in 
the ranks and these men had blind confidence in him ; they implicitly trusted 
him and he knew he was backed in any move he might make by the man who 
carried the gun, who would fully understand all orders given him. And "Stone- 
wall" Jackson also knew that his men in the ranks had the obedience and cour- 
age to execute all orders given them, hence Jackson could fling aside the laws 
of the books, for he felt perfectly safe in facing double his numbers and defeat- 
ing armies, which he repeatedly did, five times his number. It is now admitted 
that "Stonewall" Jackson and his men never fought one battle in the Valley 
that he was not compelled to fight double his numbers. And with Jackson, the 
rule was to make the enemy fight or retreat wherever he met them, no matter 
how much superior might be their numbers to his own. 

I am going to prove my claim for the man in gray, who was down in the mud, 
by the reports of the Adjutant-General, U. S. A., 1861-65. A study of these 
reports will interest those who care to read them. It will convince those who 
choose to investigate that, in every battle fought between the Confederate Army 
and the Union Army, 1861-65, the Union Army always outnumbered the Confed- 
erate forces two to one, often five to one ; and, notwithstanding the "Yanks" 
had more men, better guns, surer and better ammunition, they never drove us 
from the field in panic and rout as we often drove them. I do not deny the fact 
that we were sometimes compelled to fall back, and, in doing so, we lost guns 
and men. But I do say we never run in panic and rout ; never lost our organi- 
zation as an army to such an extent that the enemy felt safe in following us in 



42 TH 113 : IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 

our retreats, But this you will bear me out in saying, that the Federal Army 
did more than once repeat its rout and panic of 1861 of Manassas field. 

And this is one of the confirmations of my claim for the Confederate soldier 
that he was the ideal soldier of the world ; the fighting soldier without an equal. 
He was cool in action, steady under fire, never losing his head. He understood 
his duty, he knew what was expected of him, and he never disappointed his offi- 
cers. His old gray jacket was the emblem of his cause ; it was his badge of 
nobility ; his pride, his honor was concentrated in nis love for the cause ; death 
could not make him sacrifice it. 

And let me say right here, whenever you come in contact with a man, even 
at this day, who is not proud of the fact that he honorably wore that old gray 
jacket, mud-bespattered as it was, you can put it down as a certainty he was 
not much in love with the cause in those days of blood. There are but few men, 
thank God, who wore the gray that are ashamed to proclaim it today. I say we 
were right in 1861-65; we are right today. I sometimes hear men say, "We 
thought we were right." That is not the proper way to put it. 

Comrades, I say, before God and man, I absolutely know the principle for 
which we fought was holy, just and legal, and we must always say so. If there 
is a Confederate veteran living today who cannot look the world in the face and 
say from the depths of his heart that he was right, his cause patriotic and just, 
he should take off his coat of gray, bury it deep beneath the sod, and over its 
grave write, "Here lies buried the emblem of the principle that led me astray, 
made me untrue to my God and myself, made me a traitor to my country, made 
me battle for a principle I did not believe." Can you, comrades, say this? I 
know you cannot and I know you will not. 

Now, the record — I wish to call your especial attention to figures to sustain my 
claim for the men in gray. These figures are taken from the official Army Re- 
ports of the United States and Confederate States, which are in the possession 
of the War Department at Washington. Remember these figures, tell them to 
your children's children, teach them to the generation of today, that they may 
not be forgotten when you and I have passed away. These facts, these figures 
will enable our children to tell our story with pride and without shame. They 
can say, "My father followed Lee and Jackson and the flag of the Confederate 
States, whither it led, unto the end. Their cause was the cause of liberty, as 
holy and just as men ever battled for in Liberty's sacred name." 

The historians of the North have not been idle since the close of the great 
struggle in writing what they claim is fair and impartial history of 1861-65, and, 
I regret to say, some of these perverted and false histories have found place in 
our public and private schools of the South. The most of these histories, if not 
all, say the South and her soldiers fought solely for the enslavement of the 
negro, and that no other principle was involved. I will show you how the facts 
and figures completely refute this slander, and, I believe, the date I give you is 
near absolutely correct. 

In each one hundred white citizens in the South in 1861, there were but four 
that owned slave property. There were enlisted into the Confederate Army, 
during the four years of war, 639,000 men, all told. Of this number, you will 
see, there were but 200,000 who owned slave property. If this be true (and it 
is true) I would ask these historical slanderers of the South this question : If 
there were but 200,000 slave-owners in the Confederate Army, in the name of 
common sense, what were the other 400,000 fighting for? Surely not for fun. War 
is not fun. There is no fun in killing, and war means killing. It means death 
in all its horrible forms. It means suffering, pain and want. It means all the 
ills that can be inflicted upon humanity, and surely there is no pleasure in the 
inhumanity that follows in the wake of war ; I care not how humanely it may 
be conducted. 

Comrades, there was a principle involved in that great struggle of '61-65 ; a 
principle these slanderers do not want the world to see. It was a principle be- 
yond that of negro slavery. We fought for the preservation of the Constitution 
and the guaranteed rights of all citizens. This was the paramount issue of the 
war and these slanderers of the South and her people know it. And when they 
admit this truth their cause is lost and the South is vindicated before the world ; 



THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 43 

and this, these perverters of truth do not intend if they can prevent it. We 
stood in 1861-65 for this great principle ; we were the true defenders of the Con- 
stitution then ; we are its defenders now, and the world today concedes that the 
Confederate soldier was. the true, honest patriot, the real defender of the Con- 
stitution and Republican form of government intended by the builders of this 
great Nation. 

Now let me get back to the figures anH the man in gray. During the four 
years of war ('61-65) the Confederate Army fought 2,261 battles. This does 
not include skirmishes and minor engagements; 521, of 25 per cent., of these 
battles were fought on Virginia soil. In 1861, the Confederate armies fought 
150 battles ; in 1862, 564 ;' in 1863, 627 ; in 1864, 779 ; in 1865, 135. 

The Census of 1860 shows a population in the Northern States, subject to mil- 
itary duty, of 4,500,000. In the South or properly the Thirteen Original Seceding 
States, a population of 1,046,000. The Adjutant-General's Report (United 
States Army, 1861-65) says there were recruited into the United States Army, 
during the four years of war, 2,553,062 men of all arms. A corrected report 
and later figures say there were 2,800,000 and this figure, I think, is correct. 
Herp, bv their own report, taking their own figures, they began the war and 
they had, at all times, four men to our one. The very highest estimate ever 
put upon the Confederate Army in four years, all told, has been 639,000 men of 
all arms. We had in the field all our available men ; we could get no more ; 
while the Union Army could and did recruit from all parts of the globe. From 
Germany, if we can take the troops they had in this Valley as a guide, they ob- 
tained most of their recruits. I have seen men in this Valley in blue uniforms 
who could not tell their names and regiments in English to save their Jives. 
Every man who followed "Stonewall" Jackson knows this is true These 
foreigners wore the blue and were counted Yankee soldiers. 

It was not only from the European countries that the Federal armies were 
recruited, but they enlisted men from the Border and from the Seceding States. 
The Adjutant-General's Report (United States Army) shows that Maryland 
furnished 53,316 white troops ; 32,068 came from what is now West Virginia ; 
from Kentucky, 79,025 ; Missouri, 169,111 ; South Carolina, 15,000 ; while North 
Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana all furnished white 
troops to the Yankee Army. This report of the Adjutant-General shows this 
fact— that the Union Army recruited from the Thirteen Original Seceding States 
300,000 white troops, just half as many men as we had in our army at any time. 

In plainer terms, the Confederate Army recruited 639,000 men, the Union 
Army 300,000 traitors. When we stop to consider this traitor force within our 
gates, combined with that monster — starvation — is it not wonderful that we held 
out as long as we did? These figures, I think, go far to support my claim for 
the Confederate men in the ranks who were down in the mud. He was the 
grandest soldier the world ever knew. The man that toted the gun was the 
ideal soldier with which no other nation's soldiers can compare. 

A word or two on pensions to corroborate further my claim for the Confed- 
erate soldier, for all I shall say goes in as proof positive for the claim. The 
Commissioher of Pensions in his last Report says, That since the close of the 
war (1861-65) the United States Government has paid to the United States sol- 
diers of 1861-65, their widows and dependents, $4,073,816,352.89, total 1909 to 
July, 1910. This does not include salaries nor expenses in keeping and main- 
taining Soldiers' Homes. The number of cases, savs the same Report, now 
pending and awaiting settlement under the General Pension Laws is 137,201, 
and those pensions that come under the act of June 27, 1890, number 142,679. 
The average value of each pension is $132. This pension list forms the great 
bulk of our public debt, and of this vast sum— $4,073,816,352.89— the South has 
paid and is still paying in taxes one-third of the amount from which we derive 
no benefit. 

The Confederate soldier's family was robbed by the soldiers of the Union Army 
during the war ; they were plundered by the carpet-baggers during the days of 
reconstruction and we are bowed down now paying taxes to pension a lot of 
camp-followers and villains who nev^r fired a gun nor stood in the line of battle. 
Notwithstanding the fact that this gigantic pension list shows the fighting abil- 



44 THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 

ity of the Confederate soldier, we find it questioned by men in the North who 
persist in the slander that the old "Reb." of 1861-65 would not and did not fight. 

Let us now look into another proof of his claim to first rank. If the death- 
rate of army is to be taken as our guide and proof of the fighting ability of an 
army the Confederate Army takes first rank, for it is a fact, conceded and 
proven by the Record, that the Confederate armies often, in battle, destroyed 
more than one-fourth of the enemy engaged. History furnishes no record of 
soldiers that will compare with the man in gray, who went into the fight with 
a flintlock gun and armed himself with the gun of his opponent. 

Now, we look into -the regimental losses and see what they show. All these 
figures are official, taken from the reports. In the battle of Gettysburg the 26th 
North Carolina Infantry lost 90 per cent, of its number engaged. This regi- 
ment went into the fight with 800 muskets strong and lost 558 men, killed and 
wounded. The survivors joined the Pickett charge and lost in killed and wounded 
all but 80 men. Such regimental loss as this was never known before nor since 
Gettysburg. The 1st Maryland Confederate Regiment, and there was none better 
in the army, lost of its numbers engaged 82 per cent. ; the 21st Georgia lost 76 
per cent. ; the 6th Mississippi, 71 per cent. ; the 5th Texas, 82 per cent. These 
losses show, at least, if nothing else, stubborn fighting qualities on the part of 
the Confederate soldier. In the Gettysburg fight our men fought against great 
advantages held by the Union Army. Thev had numbers and position on us, 
and yet the old Confederate destroyed 75.7 per cent, of the 114th Pennsylvania 
Regiment and 73.8 of the 101st New York Regiment who fought from behind 
breastworks. This shows that position and numbers cut small figure with the 
Confederate soldier if he had just half a chance to shoot. In the Sharpsburg or 
Antietam fight in Maryland, the 20th Texas lost 83 per cent, of its number en- 
gaged, while the 12th Massachusetts lost but 76 per cent. At Antietam the 
Confederates fought against superior numbers and position and, I claim, we 
worsted McClellan in this battle. As a proof of this fact I present the following 
question : If General Lee was whipped in this fight and his army demoralized, 
as the historians of the North claim, why did not McClellan follow up his great 
victory and destroy General Lee before he could cross over the Potomac river? 

The truth is just this : General Lee and his men in grey had so badly crippled 
the Union Army that they could not follow us, and those that did had cause to 
regret their temerity when Jackson waited for them at the river, at Sheperds- 
town Ford. These facts are all positive proof of my claims for the Confederate 
men in gray who were down in the mud. 

In May, 1863, the Confederate Army was solely on the defensive. General 
Lee was confronted by Grant with a large and well-equipped army. From Spotts- 
sylvania to Cold Harbor it was a continual fight, in which General Grant and his 
army were, always foiled. - 

The campaign begun by General Grant in the beginning of May, when he at- 
tacked Lee in the Wilderness, was made with an army of 118,000 men of all 
arms, according to the official statistics, while Lee's was given at 61,000, odds of 
very nearly two to one. When the campaign closed with the battle of Cold 
Harbor on June 1, Grant's losses were given as follows : 

KILLED. WOUNDED. 

The Wilderness 2,246 12,037 

Spottsylvania 2,725 13,416 

North Anna 591 2,734 

Cold Harbor 1,844 9,077 

Sheridan's First Raid 64 337 

Sheridan's Second Raid 150 741 

Total 7,620 38,342 

To these must be added the prisoners, making a grand total lost by Grant in 
that May campaign of 54,929, or nearly as many men as Lee's whole force and 
fully as many as he had for duty, 

I read in some Report but a short time ago this fact, that there was less im- 



THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 45 

pacting of Confederate guns than there were of Union guns. The Confederate 
guns showed but 5 per cent., the Union guns over 30 per cent. What is meant 
by impacting is putting more than one charge into a gun. Now this is another 
claim for the Confederate soldiers ' intelligence in the use of the gun at least. 

The Surgeon-General's Report shows some interesting facts. There were 
killed and died of wounds during the war ('61-65) 110,674 Union soldiers. The 
Confederate States' Surgeon-General's Report shows there were killed and died 
of wounds during 1861-65, 67,000 Confederate soldiers. The number of Federal 
soldiers killed dead on the field was 74,524 ; Confederates killed dead on the field, 
53,773. So here, you see, we killed 20,751 more Union soldiers than our own 
loss. It is said, but I have not investigated its accuracy, that one out of every 
three men enlisted in the Confederate Army was killed of wounded. If these 
figures are compared with the death-rates in the great battles of the world, we 
are amazed at the death-rate of 1861-65. 

In the Russian war the loss was but 2.3 per cent, in each 100 men engaged ; 
in the great Austrian war it was 2.6. per cent, in each 100 and in the Franco- 
Prussian war it was 3 per cent, in each 100. In the war of 1861-65, the Federal 
loss was 4.7 per cent., while the Confederate loss was 9.5 per cent, in each 100 
men engaged. 

This last percentage is the largest death-rate recorded in history and presents 
another proof of the fighting qualities of the Confederate soldier. When we 
consider the arms he had until he captured better guns from the enemy we are 
lost in astonishment at the terrible execution and destruction the Confederate 
soldier did with his old flintlock gun. Yet here are the figures standing boldly 
out in confirmation of the claim that the Confederate soldier was intelligent, 
courageous and destructive. 

The man in gray, who marched and toted the gun, was a born fighter, whether 
he came from the schoolroom, the workshop or the field, and here are proof of 
this. In the ranks of the Confederate Army there were 2,000 college professors 
and graduates, 400 of whom filled soldiers' graves. In the Union Army there 
were 1,040, of whom 155 filled soldiers' graves. 

I do not believe we could build a monument too high or too costly to commem- 
orate the valor and fidelity of the man in gray ; the man behind the gun ; the 
man who for principle alone faced death, hunger and cold, marched in the mud, 
braved death in all its hideous forms and was faithful unto the end for the cause 
of justice and right. I say build him a monument as high and as broad as the 
mountains ; build him a monument that will be proof against the storms of 
time ; let it be the record for the countless millions who shall follow us, that 
they may read the history of the man in gray who tramped in the mud and car- 
ried the gun. 

Let it be the the nation's tribute to the private soldier that the generations 
that come after us, in the flight of time, cannot say the South forgot her heroes. 
When this debt is paid the private Confederate soldier, living and dead, the man 
whose old gray jacket was the insignia of his nobility, a debt of honor long over- 
due will be cancelled by the people of the South. 

I want to present a few figures taken from the Report of the United States 
Commissary of Prisoners of War (General Ludlow Hoffman, 1861-5) which is the 
most complete refutation of the slander that the Confederate authorities treated 
inhumanely their prisoners of war. These charges of cruelty are made in the 
press and pulpits of the North even at this late day. During the four years of 
the war the South held in her military prisons 270,000 Federal prisoners of war 
captured in the different battles. The United States had in her military prisons 
in the North 222,000 Confederate prisoners of war. So, by the figures of the 
United States Government, the South held 50,000 more prisoners of war in her 
prisons than the United States had Confederate prisoners of war in their prisons, 
and the Report of the United States Commissary of Prisoners of War shows 
that out of each one hundred Confederate prisoners of war held in Yankee 
prisons, twelve died, while out of each one hundred Yankee prisoners of war 
held in Southern prisons and camps, but eight died. Do not lose sight of this 
fact — it is very important to this statement. These figures are taken from the 
Report of the United States Commissary of Prisoners of War and not from the 



46 THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 

Confederate Report on the subject. Also bear in mind the South held 50,000 
more prisoners of war than the United States and 48,000 more Confederate 
prisoners of war died in Yankee prisons than there were Federal prisoners of 
war died in Southern prisons. And yet we hear men, claiming intelligence in 
the North, crying out about Andersonville, the torture-house. 

The United States Government had an abundance of rations, medicines, cloth- 
ing and all else necessary to care for her prisoners of war to make them com- 
fortable and keep them in health, while on the other hand the South had none of 
these things. The Confederate surgeons with the army were always short of 
medicines. So were our people. We had no clothing to give to our soldiers or 
prisoners, and often we had hardly rations to feed our armies. Our hospitals 
were always in need of the necessaries — let alone the comforts — and, notwith- 
standing all these drawbacks and insufficient supplies, there were 48,000 more 
prisoners of war died in Yankee prisons than Federal prisoners of war died in 
the prisons of the South. 

Comrades, the people who make the charges of cruelty to prisoners of war by 
the Confederate authorities are either unable to read or are wilful liars and 
slanderers. 

Now, just' a few more figures upon the relative strongth of the Union and 
Confederate Armies, and I am done with figures. In the 

SEVEN DAYS FIGHTING ABOUT RICHMOND 

The Federai Army had 108,000 men 

The Confederate Army had 80,726 

Federal excess 27,274 

SECOND MANASSAS. 

Federal Army 74,578 

Confederate Army 49,770 

Federal excess 24,808 

SHARPSBURG OR ANTIETAM. 

Federal Army 87,164 

Confederate Army 35,225 

Federal excess 51.939 

FREDERICKSBURG. 

Federal Army 100,000 

Confederate Army 78,228 

Federal excess 21,772 

In this battle General Lee used but 30,000 of his troops and beat General Burn- 
side's army of 100,000. This is from the sworn testimony taken before the United 
States Committee of Congress on the Conduct of the War. General Burnside 
was the witness and knew what he was telling the Committee. 

CHANCELLORSVILLE. 

Federal Army 132,000 

Confederate Army 57,000 

Federal excess 75,000 

GETTYSBURG. 

Federal Army 105,000 

Confederate Army 62,000 

Federal excess 43,800 

General Grant's report shows more men in excess than General Lee had in his 
whole army on February 28, 1865, when he fell back from Richmond to Peters- 
burg. General Lee's whole force was 39,878 men. On March 1, 1865, his force, 
with nothing to eat and short of ammunition, was 33,000 men, while the report 
of General Grant's adjutant-general shows that Grant's army with plenty to eat, 



THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 47 

all the ammunition they needed and plenty of clothing, was 162,000 men— just 
129,000 more than General Lee had, all told. 

These figures, comrades, show the reason very clearly why you were com- 
pelled to lay down your arms on that April morn thirty-eight years ago. "¥ou 
were not beaten ; you were not whipped ; nor were you unwilling to continue the 
unequal struggle. None of these causes made you lay down your arms. You 
were outnumbered, you were worn out from starvation and not by General 
Grant's army. Our beloved commander, Robert E. Lee, saw the useless sacri- 
fice of life in continuing the hopeless struggle against a well-armed and well-fed 
army double your numbers and recruited from all quarters of the globe. To that 
army the loss of men meant nothing ; to us, one man's loss counted much. 

In the surrender the Confederate soldier lost none of his glory. He made a 
record nothing can dim. He snatched from the humility of his surrender to the 
greatly superior numbers of the foe the recognition of the world for his fidelity 
to the cause of right. From that field of Appomattox every Confederate sol- 
dier carried the love and respect of Robert E. Lee and the gratitude of the 
South and her people. And I do believe there was a prayer of thanks to heaven 
from more than one "Yank" that the war was done and he had escaped the 
deadly fire of your old flintlock gun. When the end came the Confederate man 
of the ranks did not sit down and look in idleness upon the wreck and ruin of 
the war. No ; he took up the burden as he found it. He brought his intelli- 
gence and courage to his assistance and began the work of rebuilding upon the 
ruins left him. He had no capital but his intelligence and courage. It was not 
long before he convinced the world that he could build as well as fight ; and at 
no place in the South is the intelligence of the Confederate soldier more clearly 
shown than right here in this battle-scarred city of Winchester, made famous 
the world over by the immortal "Stonewall" Jackson and his men. 

If you will take the trouble to investigate you will find I have not put an ex- 
travagant estimate upon the intelligence, courage and energy of the man in gray 
who was down in the mud. He has won rank in the professions ; he has made 
his mark in the world of finance ; he has acquired a place in the mercantile world. 
In the world of letters you find him and you can always discern his intelligence 
and pluck, hide it as he may. The Confederte soldier stands proudly before 
the world today commanding its respect for his adherence to the story of 
the past. He cannt forget the past, nor can he forget the moral support 
given to our cause in those days of blood by our noble women: I claim, 
always, for the peerless women of 1861-65 a share in our glory of the past, and 
I do believe the women of that day were a potent factor in the cause. Their 
moral support and work for our army had much to do with our holding out as 
long as we did. Their love was essential to our endurance and victories. With- 
out the love, fidelity and fortitude of our grand women I do believe the struggle 
would have ended before it did. Those women of 1861-65 were truly the minis- 
tering angels of the Confederate soldier. Their share in our glory cannot be 
questioned. When we were hungry they fed us, when sick they nursed us back 
to health, when wounded they bathed our wounds with a tear : when stricken 
upon the battlefield, they were the angel messengers bearing to our loved ones 
far away the last goodbye. Their story is part and parcel of our story. Their 
deeds are engraved deeply upon the hearts of the men who love the past. We 
bowed, in those days, in admiration of those golden locks ; today we doff our 
caps in veneration to the "silver threads among the gold." We can never for- 
get the memories of the past nor the work of the noble women whose names are 
written upon the scroll of fame. Their's is a grand old story to tell over and over 
again. It is a story of love, devotion and fortitude. It is part of the story of 
the cause we loved and lost. 

From the birth of the Confederacy to its death on Appomattox field our peer- 
less women gave the world an example of love and devotion that was not sur- 
passed by the women of Sparta or Rome. When the true history of the great 
conflict is written our women of '61-65 must have their page with ours. It was 
written long ago in the blood of our bravest men, in the tears of our noblest 
women. The history of the South cannot be written nor the story truthfully 
told if our women of that day have no place in it. As the days go by these noble 






ifiAS 21 191 i 



48 THE IDEAL SOLDIER OF THE WORLD. 

women are passing away. We thank God for His goodness in giving us in our 
days of trial such women. There are few of that noble band left — many have 
passed over the river and are now residents of God's Eternal City of Love. 
They loved us in life — they love us still — and I do believe they plead in prayer 
for us before God's mercy seat. 

So comrades, let us all try and live, while on this march through life, that, 
when the order is given us to halt beyond the picket line of life, we may hear, 
coming through the pearly gates, the angel voices of these dear women of the 
Confederacy, saying: "Weary, foot-sore, old Confederate soldier, thou hast kept 
the faith unto the end ; God, our Father, bids you welcome into rest." 

I would not forget the Daughters of the South today who have taken the work 
of their sainted mothers and friends. God bless you all in your work and aid 
you always, and give you always the loyalty, devotion and strength your mothers 
gave to the cause we loved and lost in the days when the land was deluged with 
the blood of loved ones, defending our homes, the Constitution and the law. 



Letter from Mrs. Jefferson Davis. 



This letter was sent to Major Murray in reply to manuscript sub- 
mitted to Mrs. Davis. 

123 West 44th street, New York. 
My Dear Major Murray : 

I have not offered you thanks because insensible to your stirring 
address or your kindness in affording me the perusal of it, but I have 
an immense correspondence, and am very old and quite feeble. Shortly 
after your letter reached me I was stricken by a severe illness from 
which I have not yet recovered, and so have not made grateful acknowl- 
edgement for the noble address, which my dear old friend Colonel 
Park so kindly asked you to send me. 

The "policy of silence," as to my husband's eminent and devoted 

service and glad sacrifice for the Confederacy, has been pursued until 

it has seemed to me that those to whom his whole heart was given, had 

changed towards him. Your eloquent outpouring of enthusiastic esteem 

and confidence in him has put fresh heart in me, and 1 wish he could 

have lived to read it. Gratefully and cordially, 

Your friend, 

VARINA JEFFERSON DAVIS. 
February 5, 1903. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
MAR 





MANASSAS DEMOCRAT PR) 



A-" 



